ADVENTURES 


IN 


SOCIAL  WELFARE 


Division  H  V2  8 
Section  ,  l J  G  & 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/adventuresinsociOOjohn 


Adventures 
In  Social  Welfare 


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Adventures 


In  Social  Welfare 


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Being 


Reminiscences  of 
Th  i  n  g  s  ,  Thoughts  a  n  d  Folks 
During  Forty  Years  of 
Social  Work 


By  / 

ALEXANDER  JOHNSON 


Published  by  the  author  at 
Fort  Wayne,  Indiana 
May,  1923 


Press  of 

Fort  Wayne  Printing  Company 
Fort  Wayne,  Indiana. 


NOTICE 


This  book  is  not  copyrighted.  If  any  one  thinks  my  message, 
or  any  part  of  it,  is  worth  repeating,  he  may  reprint  it  with  my 
hearty  good  will,  all  the  heartier  if  he  will  mention  the  original 
and  send  me  a  copy. 


ALEXANDER  JOHNSON 


Contents 


page 

Prologue:  Social  Work  and  Social  Workers .  3 

Part  1 :  Adventures  in  Organized  Charity 

Chapter  1,  My  Adventure  with  the  Associated 

Charities  of  Cincinnati .  13 

Chapter  2,  Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Mid- 

West  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  45 

Chapter  3,  My  Adventure  with  the  Charity 

Organization  Society  of  Chicago ...  59 

Part  2 :  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

Chapter  1,  Beginning  the  Adventures .  81 

Chapter  2,  The  Board  of  State  Charities  and 

its  methods .  87 

Chapter  3,  The  First  Annual  Report .  97 

Chapter  4,  The  Board  and  the  Newspapers.  . . .  101 

Chapter  5,  Adventures  among  the  Insane .  105 

Chapter  0,  Adventures  with  Criminals .  115 

Chapter  7,  Adventures  in  State  book-keeping. .  130 

Chapter  8,  The  Asylums  for  the  Poor .  137 

Chapter  9,  Dependent  Children .  150 

Chapter  10,  An  Adventure  in  Poor  Relief .  156 

Chapter  11,  The  State  Conference  and  my  suc¬ 
cessors  .  164 

Part  3 :  Adventures  Among  the  Feeble-Minded 

Chapter  1,  Beginning  the  Adventures .  173 

Chapter  2,  Adventures  in  Education .  180 

Chapter  3,  Adventures  in  Amusement .  188 

Chapter  4,  Adventures  with  Helpers .  198 

Chapter  5,  Adventures  with  the  Colony .  210 

Chapter  6,  Adventures  in  Construction .  222 

Chapter  7,  Adventures  in  Nutrition .  232 

Chapter  8,  An  Adventure  in  Investigation .  238 

Chapter  9,  Adventures  in  Medicine .  246 

Chapter  10,  Adventures  with  Governors .  256 

Chapter  11,  The  Adventure’s  ending .  264 

vii 


PAGE 

Part  4 :  Adventures  with  the  National  Conference  of 

Charities  and  Correction 

Chapter  1,  The  Conference  and  some  of  its 

methods  .  269 

Chapter  2,  My  early  Conferences,  1884-1889 . . .  281 

Chapter  3,  Adventures  as  Secretary,  1st  series, 

1890-1893  . 295 

Chapter  4,  Conferences  from  1893-1904 .  305 

Chapter  5,  Adventures  as  Secretary,  2nd  series, 

1905-1907  .  327 

Chapter  6,  Adventures  as  Secretary,  3rd  series, 

1908-1913  .  344 

Part  5 :  Adventures  in  Social  Education 

Chapter  1,  The  School  of  Philanthropy  in  New 

York . 371 

Chapter  2,  The  School  of  Civics  and  Philan¬ 
thropy  in  Chicago .  379 

Chapter  3,  Other  Schools  and  Colleges . 384 

Part  6 :  Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda  for  the 

Feeble-Minded 

Chapter  1,  The  Task .  391 

Chapter  2,  The  Execution  .  396 

Chapter  3,  The  Results .  413 

Part  7 :  Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 

Chapter  1,  In  Camp  with  the  Soldier  Boys. . .  .  421 

Chapter  2,  Adventures  as  Director  of  Super¬ 
vision  .  435 

Chapter  3,  The  Great  Opportunity  of  Red  Cross 

Home  Service .  443 

Index  .  449 

viii 


DEDICATION 

To  the  Social  Workers  of  America,  my  companions  and  work- 
fellows,  whose  courage,  cheerfulness,  loyalty  and  warm,  human 
friendliness  have  made  my  life  among  them  a  fortunate  and  happy 
one:  I  lovingly  dedicate  this  record  of  forty  years’  adventuring. 

ALEXANDER  JOHNSON 


IX 


PROLOGUE 


SOCIAL  WORK  AND  SOCIAL  WORKERS 


PROLOGUE 


SOCIAL  WORK  AND  SOCIAL  WORKERS 

When  I  contrast  the  full  and  interesting  life  I  have  had  during 
the  past  forty  years  with  the  dull,  monotonous  grind  which  prob¬ 
ably  would  have  been  mine  had  I  early  learned  to  make  money 
and  become  absorbed  in  that  narrowing  occupation,  I  am 
devoutly  grateful  to  the  friends  who  persuaded  me  to  adopt  the 
most  fascinating  of  professions.  A  man  can  have  no  better  for¬ 
tune  than  that  the  labor  by  which  he  lives  brings  such  satisfaction 
that  if  he  did  not  need  to  work  for  wages  he  would  gladly  do  it 
without.  Such  good  fortune  many  a  social  worker  shares  with 
real  artists,  devoted  physicians,  true  preachers,  a  few  fine  crafts¬ 
men,  every  great  scientist  and  some  other  happy  folk. 

Not  that  social  work  knows  no  pain,  anxiety,  disappointment, 
failure,  defeat.  He  would  be  indeed  a  fortunate  adventurer  for 
whom  all  winds  were  favorable,  who  never  misread  his  chart, 
whose  ship  cleared  every  rock  and  shoal.  Social  work,  as  Cabot 
says,  is  one  of  the  dangerous  occupations  and  its  money  rewards 
are  small.  But  its  real  compensations  are  great;  at  any  rate 
one  old  worker  thinks  so,  and  indeed  is  so  sure  of  it  that  he  wants 
to  tell  the  fact  to  all  who  will  read  his  true  story. 

The  wise  old  Greek  said,  “Call  no  man  happy  till  he  is  dead”. 
Perhaps  we  may  revise  his  wisdom  a  little  and  say  “until  he  has 
retired”.  When  a  man  has  given  up  active  work,  is  six  years  past 
the  psalmist’s  ill-considered  limit  of  threescore  and  ten,  and  is 
well  content  with  his  lot  so  far,  he  may  reasonably  hope  for 
immunity  from  serious  unhappiness  during  the  brief  span  which 
will  be  his. 

The  duty  of  putting  my  memories  into  print  was  first  laid  on 
me,  about  seven  years  ago,  by  my  friend,  Edwin  D.  Solenberger, 
who  declared  that  I  had  a  store  of  experience  which  should  not 
be  wasted.  Other  friends  have  repeated  his  demand.  So  I  am 
writing  partly  to  satisfy  them ;  partly  to  please  myself  by  setting 
my  memories  in  order  before  they  become  too  dim,  fighting  over 
again  some  old  battles,  tasting  in  retrospect  the  sweets  of  victory 


3 


4 


Prologue 


and  the  wholesome  bitter  of  defeat  ;  partly  also  in  the  hope  that 
I  may  interest  and  even  instruct  some  of  the  present  generation 
of  social  workers,  to  whom  I  feel  as  a  grandfather;  but  most  of 
all  that  I  may  bear  testimony  to  the  value  and  satisfactions  of 
a  worthy  profession. 

Having  decided  to  write,  came  the  question  of  the  form  my 
book  should  take.  About  one  great  department  of  social  progress 
in  recent  years  I  can  say,  as  Aeneas  said  about  events  in  Troy, 
“all  of  which  I  saw  and  part  of  which  I  was”.  I  hesitated  a  while 
between  attempting  a  volume  of  essays,  which  would  be  imper¬ 
sonal,  in  little  danger  of  apparent  egotism;  and  a  partial  auto¬ 
biography,  interspersed  with  reflections  which  might  be  near 
essays.  Then  I  wanted  to  write  for  my  work-fellows ;  the  social 
workers  of  America,  among  whom  I  count  hundreds  of  the  friends 
who  have  meant  most  in  my  life.  So  the  personal  note  seemed 
not  out  of  place,  and  I  determined  to  tell  my  story  as  a  series  of 
adventures,  setting  down  the  thoughts  which  they  suggest  as 
digressions  by  the  way. 

Having  made  my  plan,  the  next  problem  was  where  to  begin. 
Should  it  be  with  the  first  inklings  of  what  has  become  a  dominant 
motive— the  desire  to  make  things  better  for  the  less  fortunate  of 
my  kind — to  be  a  small  part  of  that  human  providence  which 
seems  to  be  the  most  certain  we  can  invoke?  Or  should  I  wait 
until  the  period  when  an  avocation  became  a  vocation  and  I 
supported  my  family  by  the  kind  of  work  which  had  occupied 
a  few  hours  of  leisure? 

Some  things  that  happened  in  my  childhood  had  made  lasting 
impressions.  The  very  earliest  incident  I  can  dimly  recall  was 
of  a  group  of  boys  and  girls — as  my  childish  memory  multiplied 
them  they  seemed  hundreds,  tho  I  know  they  could  only  have  been 
a  dozen  or  two — clustering  around  the  back  door  of  our  house 
in  Ashton-under-Lyne,  being  fed  with  broth  out  of  a  steaming 
cauldron — enormous  it  seemed  to  my  young  recollection.  Years 
afterward  I  learned  from  my  mother  that  they  were  starving 
children  of  striking  cotton-spinners  and  weavers  and  most  of 
them  lived  in  cottages  Tvhich  my  father  owned,  on  the  back  street 
behind  our  house.  My  father,  a  prosperous  merchant  tailor,  was 
not  supposed  to  know  about  the  soup  kettle,  since  his  best  cus¬ 
tomers  were  the  employers  of  the  strikers,  and  strikes  were  fierce 


Social  Work  and  Workers 


5 


conflicts  seventy-two  years  ago  and  everybody  took  sides  in  them. 
In  the  rioting  near  the  end  of  the  long  strike,  some  gardens,  which 
had  been  made  out  of  a  few  acres  of  the  reclaimed  “Ashton  Moss”, 
just  outside  the  town,  were  raided  and  my  father’s  acre  was  the 
only  one  untouched;  his  rosebushes  and  gooseberry  trees  (Lan¬ 
cashire  was  famous  for  gooseberries)  being  spared. 

Another  early  social  experience,  the  first  in  which  I,  a  boy  of 
fifteen,  had  part,  was  during  the  Lancashire  “cotton  famine”, 
which  was  a  by-product  of  the  war  between  the  states.  Our 
well-to-do  London  relatives,  instead  of  contributing  to  the  general 
relief  fund,  sent  money  to  us  for  the  people  in  Salford  among 
whom  we  lived.  Again  my  mother’s  wonderfully  economical 
cooking  came  in  and  she  fed  scores  of  children  daily;  and  this 
time  father  did  not  have  to  pretend  ignorance.  I  had  a  Sunday- 
school  class  and  had  the  pleasure  of  buying  “clogs”  for  ten  little 
boys  so  they  could  attend  on  Sunday  morning,  as  one  could  not 
barefoot. 

One  incident  of  that  period  gave  me  my  first  knowledge,  often 
reenforced  since,  of  how  “charity”  is  hated  and  feared  by  the 
decent  poor.  The  working  people  of  Lancashire  were  the  sturdi¬ 
est,  least  subservient,  most  democratic  of  English  folk.  Peter 
Benson,  an  old  weaver,  was  a  deacon  of  the  little  Baptist  chapel 
of  which  my  father  was  a  pillar  (father  always  went  where  he 
thought  he  was  needed  instead  of  to  a  church  wherein  he  might 
have  found  customers  for  his  tailor  shop).  We  were  sure  the 
Benson  family  must  be  near  the  breaking  point  and,  knowing 
they  would  starve  rather  than  apply  to  the  relief  fund,  father 
took  me  with  him  when  he  went  with  the  offer  of  a  few  shillings 
of  my  uncle’s  money;  he  had  little  enough  of  his  own  by  this 
time,  for  business  was  at  a  standstill  in  the  cotton  district.  The 
sturdy  old  man  refused  the  bitter  bread  of  charity,  declared  they 
were  all  right,  they  had  no  need.  All  father’s  eloquence  seemed 
in  vain  until  he  said  “Well,  Peter,  let’s  tell  the  Lord  about  it”. 
Whereupon  we  all  went  down  on  our  knees  and  in  a  few  moments 
the  whole  household  was  in  tears.  Father  prayed  that  we  might 
be  delivered  from  wicked  pride,  hardness  of  heart  and  stiffness  of 
neck,  be  humble  minded  and  willing  both  to  give  and  receive  the 
tokens  of  love  from  each  other  as  well  as  from  God.  When 
“Amen”  sounded,  Peter,  who  was  weeping  like  the  rest,  said, 


ti 


Prologue 


“John  Johnson,  thou  art  right,  I  am  a  proud  and  wicked  man,  I 
have  lied  to  thee.  We  took  our  last  penny  from  the  savings  bank 
five  days  agone  and  there’s  not  a  crust  in  the  house.” 

Another  childish  memory  which  has  influenced  my  thinking 
thru  life,  was  of  being  shown  St.  Peter’s  square  in  Manchester, 
the  scene  of  the  “Peterloo  Massacre”,  which  occurred  the  year 
before  I  was  born;  when  the  yeomanry  cavalry  rode  down  and 
sabred  the  Chartist  “Blanketeers”  who  were  gathering ;  each  with 
a  blanket  and  two  loaves  of  bread ;  to  march  to  London  and  pre¬ 
sent  a  petition  to  Parliament  for  their  great  Charter ;  which  with 
its  “six  points” — manhood  suffrage ;  vote  by  ballot ;  equal  electoral 
districts;  paid  members;  no  property  qualifications  (for  mem¬ 
bers)  ;  and  annual  parliaments — seems  now  so  mild  and  has 
nearly  all  become  law  long  ago. 

About  the  same  time  my  father  told  me  of  his  earliest  mem¬ 
ory,  an  event  which  happened  in  1798,  when  he  was  three  years 
old.  How  a  “Church  and  King  Mob”  raided  the  house,  hunting 
for  my  grandfather,  who  was  supposed  to  be  a  “radical”,  and 
when  they  could  not  find  him  took  out  his  uncle,  a  feeble  old 
man  who  sat  in  the  chimney  corner  all  day,  and  pumped  on  him ; 
and  then  dragged  out  my  father’s  sisters,  girls  of  17  and  20,  and 
threw  them  on  the  “midden-stead”  while  he  hid  under  the  bed. 

These  events  and  stories,  the  last  two  strangely  suggesting 
things  that  have  happened  in  the  United  States  since  April,  1917, 
were  part  of  my  preparation  for  social  work  as  well  as  for 
American  citizenship. 

But  all  these  were  long  before  I  became  a  social  worker.  The 
appropriate  date  to  begin  with  seemed  to  be  that  when  I  had  my 
first  connection  with  Associated  Charities  in  Cincinnati.  So  my 
first  adventures  to  recount  are  those  with  the  so-called  “scien¬ 
tific”  organized  charities  of  the  eighteen-eighties. 

What  a  mere  suggestion  of  today’s  range  of  social  work  there 
was  forty  years  ago  in  what  we  were  trying  to  make  people 
understand  as  “organized”  charity!  And  the  agents  and  secre¬ 
taries  of  the  Associated  Charities  and  Charity  Organization 
Societies  of  those  early  days;  how  few  their  kinds  of  activities, 
how  narrow  the  scope  of  their  vision  (altho  dreams  of  great 
things  did  come  to  some  of  us)  compared  with  the  wide  horizon, 
ever  widening,  of  the  profession  in  this  twentieth  century,  with 


Social  Work  and  Workers 


7 


its  forty-two  varieties  of  practitioners — as  numbered  by  the 
American  Association  of  Social  Workers — each  with  its  several 
sub-varieties !  Yet  those  agents  and  secretaries  were  the  pioneers 
of  the  profession*  and  hundreds  of  recently  recruited  social  work¬ 
ers  who  feel  their  present  tasks  to  be  radically  different  from 
what  they  call,  perhaps  with  some  disdain,  “old-fashioned  char¬ 
ity”,  began  only  a  few  years  ago  in  that  narrower  sphere. 

Even  the  Survey  which  with  its  monthly  Graphic  number  is 
the  most  inclusive,  most  useful  and  most  attractive  social  publi¬ 
cation  today;  altho  it  had  a  sub-title  of  “ Journal  of  Practical 
Sociology”;  began  only  thirty-two  years  ago  as  “The  Charities 
Review” ;  and  absorbed  The  International  Record  of  Charities  and 
Correction;  Jewish  Charities  and  others  of  similar  ilk.  So  tho 
what  we  called  organized  charity  is  now  only  a  small  part  of 
social  work,  it  is  a  part  and  I  need  not  apologize  if  I  begin  my 
story  of  social  adventures  with  those  I  had  with  the  Associated 
Charities  of  Cincinnati  and  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of 
Chicago. 

Think  what  it  meant  to  be  a  beginner  in  social  work  without 
all  that  the  Schools  for  Social  Workers  now  teach;  all  that 
Warner,  Devine,  Gillin,  Mary  Richmond  and  so  many  others  more 
have  written  for  us.  Perhaps  I  as  one  of  the  untrained  beginners 
may  contribute  a  few  suggestions  about  the  early  years  of  organ¬ 
ized  charity  which  may  be  of  use  when  some  great  philosopher 
shall  write  “The  History  of  Social  Endeavor”.  If  as  a  philosopher 
should  be  he  is  also  a  poetf  he  may  find  or  invent  the  wished  for 
word  for  our  profession  to  replace  the  present  name,  which  many 
people  find  unsatisfactory. 

One  of  the  charms  of  the  profession  of  social  work  is  its  versa¬ 
tility.  No  matter  where  you  begin  if  you  begin  aright  the  whole 
field  is  open.  As  with  Napoleon’s  conscripts  the  marshal’s  baton 
is  in  every  knapsack.  President  Eliot  says  the  educated  man  is 
one  who  knows  everything  about  something  and  something  about 
everything.  So  with  the  social  worker;  he  must  know  his  own 

♦For  a  clear  and  cogent  statement  of  our  place  as  social  workers  in 
society  today,  see  Devine’s  “Efficiency  and  Relief”,  which  was  his  inaugural 
lecture  as  Professor  of  Social  Economy  at  Columbia,  or  still  better  his 
“Social  Work”,  McMillan’s  1922. 

tThe  poet  of  old  was  the  word  maker.  He  was  “Word-Smith”  as  well 
as  “Song-Smith”. 


8 


Prologue 


job  thoroly  and  have  a  general  idea  of  all  the  rest.  I  would  like 
had  I  time  and  knowledge  to  tell  of  the  many  who  began  at  the 
foot  as  assistant  agent  of  a  charities  district  or  something  as 
humble  and  are  now  doing  big  things  even  leading  great  social 
causes. 

The  Art  of  social  work  began  before  the  dawn  of  history.  It 
was  well  developed  before  the  Pentateuch  was  written.  The  agent 
of  a  League  for  Social  Welfare  or  the  director  of  a  Legal  Aid 
Society,  may  be  well  content  if  he  can  honestly  rank  himself 
with  the  patriarch  Job.*  He  who  wrote  down  the  old  legend  of 
Jonah  was  a  precursor  of  the  agent  of  the  Humane  Society  of 
today,  when  he  had  compassion  not  only  on  the  children  of 
Nineveh  but  also  on  the  cattle  in  the  doomed  city.f 

But  the  Science  of  social  work  without  which  it  can  hardly  be 
counted  a  profession  is  recent.  The  first  hint  that  we  had  at  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction  that  such  a  sci¬ 
ence  could  be  recognized  by  a  University,  was  in  1893.  Warner’s 
first  edition  of  “American  Charities,”  among  the  earliest  books  to 
treat  the  subject  scientifically,  was  new  then.  Henderson  was  led 
into  applied  sociology  and  to  writing  “Dependents,  Defectives, 
and  Delinquents”  and  his  other  books;  thru  his  experiences  in 
organizing  Associated  Charities  in  Terre  Haute  and  Detroit. 
Warner,  Devine,  Miss  Richmond  and  others  whose  writings  enrich 
the  literature  of  social  work  began  as  secretaries  of  Charity 
Organization  Societies. 

The  term  “social  worker”  was  chiefly  used  at  first  to  mean  an 
agent  of  the  organized  charities;  but  the  term  soon  took  on  a 
wider  meaning.  I  felt  myself  just  as  much  a  social  worker  when 
I  was  inspecting  prisons,  hospitals,  jails  and  poorhouses  for  a 
Board  of  State  Charities,  or  conducting  a  school  for  feeble¬ 
minded;  as  when  I  was  secretary  of  an  Associated  Charities  or 
of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction. 

My  adventures  in  social  welfare  occurred  during  seven  years 
spent  in  organized  charity ;  four  with  a  Board  of  State  Charities ; 
ten  while  living  among  the  feeble-minded ;  nine  as  paid  secretary 
of  the  National  Conference  ;  five  in  lecturing  all  over  the  country 
on  behalf  of  the  feeble-minded;  and  four  with  the  Bed  Cross. 

♦Job  XXIX.  12-17. 
t Jonah  IX.  11. 


Social  Work  and  Workers 


9 


During  twenty-two  of  these  years  I  was  also  directing  or  lectur¬ 
ing  at  schools  of  social  work  and  enjoying  many  opportunities  of 
forwarding  social  education  at  summer  schools  and  colleges. 

My  book  will  be  arranged  chiefly  by  kinds  of  work  rather  than 
by  periods  of  time.  It  begins  with  Associated  Charities  and  will 
fittingly  end  with  the  home  service  of  the  Red  Cross  which  as  I 
see  it  is  a  development  of  the  same  idea  of  organized  social  work. 

Because  I  want  my  experiences  to  be  really  of  value  to  those 
for  whom  I  write — to  whom  my  book  is  dedicated — I  shall  tell 
them  frankly  of  much  gratifying  success;  making  friends  for 
myself  and  my  work ;  doing  things  and  getting  things  done.  But 
I  shall  tell  them  also  as  frankly  (or  almost  as  frankly),  of  dis¬ 
appointing  failures;  some  caused  by  error  about  facts  or  of 
opinion ;  some  by  other  people’s  derelictions ;  some  by  over-ambi¬ 
tion  or  undue  haste  or  by  circumstances  quite  beyond  my  control 
and  which  could  not  have  been  foreseen ;  and  some  because  I  let 
temptation,  bad  advice,  seeming  expediency,  even  cowardice, 
warp  my  judgment  about  what  was  best  and  worst. 

I  write  out  of  long  and  sometimes  painful  experience  when  I 
counsel  social  workers  to  obey  Emerson,  and  “always  do  what 
you  are  afraid  to  do”.  I  have  always  been  glad  when  I  have 
faced  “life’s  ragged  and  dangerous  front”  and  done  the  evidently 
right  thing  altho  disaster  threatened;  I  have  never  “taken  coun¬ 
sel  with  my  fears”  without  regret  following  fast. 

To  live  is  a  serious  and  strenuous  business.  Now  anyone  can 
be  strenuous  and  morose.  Courage,  energy,  persistence  are  not 
enough.  The  social  worker  must  do  his  task — with  whatever 
intense  application — cheerfully  even  gaily.  “The  world  has  such 
need  of  joy.”  I  early  took  as  a  height  of  living  to  which  I  tried 
to  attain  the  motto  “strenuous  and  gay”.  I  offer  it  to  my  com¬ 
rades  as  a  counsel  of  perfection  to  which  if  they  attain  they  shall 
do  well. 


. 

. 


. 


. 


’ 

. 


, 


PART  ONE 


ADVENTURES  IN  ORGANIZED  CHARITY 


V 


Chapter  One 

MY  ADVENTURE  WITH  THE  ASSOCIATED  CHARITIES 

OE  CINCINNATI 

«  * 

My  first  contact  with  organized  social  work  and  the  beginning 
of  my  adventure  with  the  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 
was  as  a  volunteer.  The  chief  advocate  and  promoter  of  the  new 
society  was  the  Rev.  Charles  W.  Wendte,  an  eloquent  and  public 
spirited  Unitarian  minister  whom  I  like  to  claim  with  loving 
reverence  as  my  spiritual  father,  both  in  the  religion  of  thought 
and  emotion  and  in  that  of  action  which  is  social  service.  Mr. 
Wendte  was  organizing  the  Society  by  districts  and  as  I  lived 
on  the  fringe  of  the  wealthy  residence  section  of  Mt.  Auburn,  he 
induced  me  to  join  when  he  organized  that  territory  as  the  second 
district  in  1882.  It  was  called  the  second  district  altho  it  was 
really  the  sixth  to  be  formed,  the  first  having  been  begun  two 
years  earlier. 

Mr.  Wendte  stressed  the  duty  on  me  because  I  had  more 
leisure  than  most  of  the  business  men  whom  he  was  able  to 
influence.  I  was  employed  at  the  time  in  the  manufacturing 
department  of  a  Jewish  clothing  house  which  remembered  the 
Sabbath  day  to  keep  it  holy  so  that  I  had  Saturday  as  well  as 
Sunday  free  from  work.  He  further  believed  that  because  I  was 
a  working  man  I  was  specially  qualified  to  be  a  friendly  visitor. 
I  felt  myself  rather  out  of  place  among  the  wealthy  residents  of 
Mount  Auburn,  especially  when  at  the  very  first  meeting  I  was 
elected  on  the  board  of  directors.  However  tho  I  had  less  monev 
to  give  than  my  fellow  directors  I  could  and  would  give  more 
time,  so  I  was  able  to  hold  up  my  end  and  was  never  or  hardly 
ever  made  to  feel  my  poverty. 

Partly  because  of  the  way  in  which  the  society  was  organ¬ 
ized;  its  strength  at  first  being  with  the  districts,  each  of  which 
was  autonomous  in  its  own  territory;  instead  of  with  the  central 


13 


14 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


body  which  should  control  the  whole ;  and  partly  because  the  plan 
itself  was  faulty;  it  was  nearly  five  years  before  the  society 
deserved  its  name.  The  associated  work  was  not  really  begun 
until  a  disaster  had  left  as  an  aftermath,  a  fund  which  made  the 
central  board  able  to  function.  In  fact  until  it  was  thoroly 
re-organized  many  years  later,  it  was  rather  a  group  of  district 
relief  agencies  than  an  association  of  the  charities  of  the  city. 

The  City  in  the  Eighties 

Most  of  the  cities  in  the  Middle- West  try  to  pattern  them¬ 
selves  after  New  York.  Cincinnati  had  a  well  marked  indi¬ 
viduality  of  its  own  and  for  a  long  time  did  not  try  to  copy  any 
other  city.  It  began  as  a  river  town  and  in  1877  when  I  moved 
there,  it  had  still  a  few  of  the  picturesque  elements  of  the  days 
of  the  river  traffic.  There  was  and  still  is  the  “levee”,  with  its 
memories  of  roistering  deck-hands  and  engineers.  The  river  front 
was  marked  by  tall  houses  once  the  chief  places  of  business; 
among  them  the  old  hotels  now  mostly  sunk  to  a  low  estate.  What 
had  been  the  finest  hotel  in  town  was  a  mission  house  the  Union 
Bethel.  Some  formerly  big  warehouses  were  tenements  called 
by  such  names  as  “Rat  Row”  and  “Sausage  Row”. 

Old  citizens  used  to  tell  of  the  glories  of  early  days;  when  the 
levee  would  be  crowded  with  teams  and  boatmen ;  when  the  river¬ 
front  stores  and  saloons  were  each  a  small  gold  mine;  when 
steamboats  tied  up  as  close  together  as  was  safe  would  line  a 
mile  or  more  of  the  river  bank. 

When  I  went  to  live  there  the  glory  was  gone  from  the  levee. 
A  few  boats  still  plied  the  Ohio,  mostly  carrying  passengers  who 
preferred  the  sldw  river  trip,  with  its  coolness  and  freedom  from 
dust,  to  the  dusty,  dirty,  hurrying  railroad.  But  the  picturesque 
“coal-tows”;  eight  scows  to  a  tow,  three  abreast  with  a  stern- 
wheel  steamboat  the  center  of  the  rear  trio,  were  nearly  all  that 
remained  of  the  ancient  days.  These  still  came  down  “King  Coal’s 
Highway”,  as  the  water  would  rise  to  carry  them,  from  the 
Allegheney  and  Youghiogheny  down  the  Ohio  and  on  to  the  Mis¬ 
sissippi,  bearing  fuel  to  the  hundreds  of  cities  and  villages  all  the 
way  to  New  Orleans,  coming  back  empty,  slowly  pushing 
.  up-stream, 


The  City  in  the  Eighties 


15 


One  night  from  a  farm  house  on  the  river  bank  twenty  miles 
above  the  city  we  watched  a  fleet  of  tows,  some  dozens  of  them, 
carrying  many  thousand  tons  of  coal,  waiting  above  a  sand-bar 
for  water.  They  had  started  with  a  freshet  and  had  run  ahead 
of  its  crest  until  they  were  stopped  by  the  bar.  We  saw  the  men 
with  their  flaring  torches  and  fires,  heard  their  shouts  and  songs ; 
the  river  was  covered  with  them.  It  was  a  picturesque  sight; 
we  watched  them  listening  until  midnight.  In  the  morning  all 
was  quiet  the  freshet  had  caught  up  with  its  burden  and  carried 
them  over  the  bar  and  they  were  miles  down  stream  towards 
their  various  destined  ports. 

When  freight  was  all  by  river  a  large  industry  of  teaming 
developed.  Four  and  six  mule  teams  used  to  be  common.  The 
heavy  boxes  and  barrels  were  hauled  up  the  levee  from  the  boats 
with  great  labor.  When  the  railroads  came  in  by  way  of  the 
valleys  of  Millcreek  to  the  West  and  the  Little  Miami  to  the  East 
the  freight  depots  were  deliberately  kept  a  mile  or  two  apart 
so  that  the  teamsters  should  have  employment;  a  curious  bit  of 
protectionism. 

Before  the  days  of  the  railroads  the  city  had  become  a  whole¬ 
sale  supply  center  for  southern  Ohio,  Kentucky  and  much  of 
Indiana;  competing  with  Louisville  and  Evansville.  Its  early 
customers  had  been  hunters  and  trappers,  but  the  territory  opened 
up  quickly  many  farmers  settled  on  the  rich  virgin  soil  of  the 
three  states.  In  the  seventies  commercial  pursuits  were  still  the 
main  activity,  but  manufacturing  of  many  kinds  was  coming  in 
rapidly  and  the  character  of  the  people  was  changing  with  it. 

During  slavery  days  there  were  important  stations  of  the 
Underground  Railway  along  the  river.  Uncle  Tom’s  Cabin  was 
written  in  a  house  on  Walnut  Hills.  Its  authoress  could  sit  on 
her  back  porch  and  see  slaves  at  work  in  fields  across  the  river 
in  Kentucky.  The  incident  on  which  the  story  of  Eliza  crossing 
the  river  on  the  floating  ice  was  based,  happened  in  Clermont 
county  twenty  miles  up  the  river,  the  district  where  we  began 
our  fresh  air  work  in  1884.  Mr.  Donaldson,  father  of  the  friend 
who  helped  me  begin  that  work,  had  kept  a  station  of  the  railway 
on  his  farm  on  the  river  bank  and  had  helped  scores  of  runaway 
slaves  to  freedom.  But  before  the  Civil  War  public  sentiment 
among  the  mass  of  the  people  was  rather  pro-slavery.  Wendell 


16 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


Phillips  was  driven  from  the  platform  by  an  anti-abolition  mob 
and  narrowly  escaped  personal  violence,  while  W.  F.  Yancey,  with 
his  treasonable  lectures,  was  heard  without  disturbance. 

During  the  war  while  it  was  uncertain  how  Kentucky  would 
side,  there  was  tremendous  excitement.  The  city  would  have 
been  a  rich  prize  to  a  Confederate  army.  Many  regiments  of 
militia  and  homeguards  were  recruited  ;  enormous  “ Columbia d s' ’ 
were  planted  on  the  hilltops  commanding  the  river  crossings. 
For  a  while  the  city  was  as  much  like  an  army  camp  as  it  used 
to  be  in  the  old  Indian  fighting  days. 

But  by  1880,  altho  the  war  was  over  less  than  fifteen  years; 
the  animosities  of  the  fifties  and  sixties  were  only  lingering 
memories.  There  were  many  veterans  of  the  Northern  army  and 
Cincinnati  tho  on  the  line  was  distinctly  a  Northern  city  in 
sentiment  as  in  geographical  location ;  politically  it  was  doubtful 
in  a  state  strongly  republican. 

Early  Cincinnati  history  is  full  of  romantic  and  thrilling 
episodes.  Nowhere  else  in  the  winning  of  the  West  were  there 
more  reckless,  daring  exploits  and  some  tinge  of  the  adventur¬ 
ousness  and  lawlessness  of  the  fighting  pioneers  lingered ;  as  was 
shown  in  1885,  when  a  mob  stormed  and  set  fire  to  the  courthouse 
in  an  attempt  to  lynch  some  notorious  criminals  whose  trial  had 
been  a  travesty  of  justice. 

The  town  was  begun  on  the  bottom  lands,  varying  in  width 
from  a  hundred  yards  to  half  a  mile,  on  the  north  bank  of  the 
Ohio  opposite  the  mouth  of  the  Licking  river;  and  gradually 
spread  up  and  down  the  stream.  Then  it  grew  out  over  a  second 
level  of  varying  width  and  along  the  Millcreek  valley.  It  was 
long  before  people  found  that  the  hill-tops  were  good  places  to 
live.  But  first  a  few  wealthy  people,  and  then  when  the  inclined 
railways  were  invented  and  a  nickel  street  car  ride  would  take 
one  to  the  top  and  later  three  or  four  miles  into  the  country; 
the  middle  and  working  class  began  to  go  there  also. 

Before  people  went  to  the  hill-tops  there  were  several  well 
marked  residence  sections  on  the  lowlands;  and  some  of  them 
remained  after  Mt.  Auburn,  Price’s  Hill  and  Walnut  Hills  became 
popular.  Here  the  wealthy  and  the  middle  and  working  classes 
lived  near  together,  and  this  fact  had  some  influence  on  the 
development  of  social  work.  In  1882  a  few  of  the  oldest  and 


The  City  in  the  Eighties 


17 


wealthiest  families,  the  Longworths,  Andersons,  McDonalds  and 
others  still  lived  down  town.  But  by  the  middle  of  the  eighteen- 
eighties  most  of  the  well-to-do  lived  on  the  hills  and  the  city  was 
dividing  itself  into  sections,  inhabited  by  people  who  felt  them¬ 
selves  different  from  those  of  other  districts. 

At  the  centre  of  the  city  the  second  level  spread  back  for  a 
mile  and  a  half  towards  the  hills  and  westward  some  miles  into 
the  Millcreek  Valley.  The  old  Miami  and  Erie  canal,  once  an 
important  artery  of  trade  which  is  now  a  boulevard  with  a  sub¬ 
way,  was  a  boundary  line  between  the  business  section  and  a 
large  and  densely  populated  German  district,  mostly  tenement 
houses,  often  called  “Over  the  Bhine”.  Here  were  a  few  fac¬ 
tories,  the  upper  part  of  Main  Street  with  a  few  good  stores 
mostly  patronized  by  the  Germans,  and  the  great  breweries 
where  they  brewed  the  best  beer  made  in  the  world  outside  its 
native  Bohemia.* 

The  thrifty,  industrious,  saving  and  yet  pleasure-loving  Ger¬ 
mans,  of  the  working  and  middle  classes  gave  a  distinct  character 
to  the  population.  Tho  pleasure-loving  they  were  temperate. 
They  knew  how  to  spend  a  pleasant  evening  in  their  “bier  halles”, 
with  their  “pinochle” ;  or  listening  to  music  by  Mozart,  Beethoven 
or  Wagner  played  by  a  good  orchestra;  often  their  wives  and 
sometimes  their  children  with  them;  sipping  their  three  or  four 
steins  of  good  beer  during  a  whole  evening;  in  the  middle  of  the 
evening  taking  a  lunch  of  “schweitzer  kase”  or  “wienerwurst”  and 
“schwarzbrod”,  a  drunken  man  never  or  rarely  seen  among  them. 

The  temperate  Germans  were  very  critical  of  the  American 
saloons;  so  different  from  their  beer  halls  where  everybody  had 
a  chair;  and  of  the  American  drinkers  who  gulped  down  a  glass 
of  beer  at  two  swallows  or  stood  at  a  bar  their  feet  on  the  rail 
and  their  elbows  on  the  counter  treating  and  being  treated  to 
several  glasses  of  whiskey  in  a  few  minutes.  They  drank  their 
beer  slowly  sitting  down  to  it  and  every  man  paid  his  own  shot. 
“Dutch  treat”  had  its  origin  there. 

♦When  Emil  Munsterberg,  the  head  of  Berlin’s  Charities,  was  studying 
our  benevolences  and  social  institutions  in  1905,  he  told  me  that  he  had 
drunk  American  made  lager  in  every  part  of  the  country,  in  fine  hotels 
and  common  saloons,  and  that  he  found  it  above  the  average  in  quality  of 
the  ordinary  beer  found  at  similar  places  in  Germany.  The  quality  of  the 
beer  we  drank  inspired  him  with  some  hope  for  the  future  of  the  United 
States. 


18 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


It  was  German  influence  that  made  Cincinnati  a  center  of 
music.  The  audiences  which  thronged  the  big  music  hall  that 
Reuben  Springer  gave  to  the  city ;  to  hear  fine  concerts  of  classical 
music  or  to  enjoy  the  occasional  seasons  of  grand  opera  were 
largely  German.  The  great  College  of  Music  had  German  pro¬ 
fessors  and  instructors,  Theodore  Thomas  for  long  at  their  head. 
The  German  theatre  was  always  crowded;  German  newspapers 
had  a  large  circulation. 

One  of  the  larger  industries  of  Cincinnati  was  the  manufac¬ 
turing  of  clothing.  The  leading  firms  were  Jewish  but  the  cut¬ 
ters  and  tailors  were  mostly  German.  The  German  churches, 
Lutheran  and  Catholic,  had  large  congregations  on  Sunday  morn¬ 
ing  ;  but  Sunday  afternoon  was  a  time  of  recreation.  There  were 
numerous  “sommer  gartens”  and  amusement  places  on  the  out¬ 
skirts.  On  one  of  the  hills  was  the  “Schutzen  Platz”,  a  German 
rifle  club,  with  an  amusement  park  around  it  which  was  very 
popular. 

The  Germans  usually  married  early  in  life  and  had  large 
families.  They  looked  askance  at  the  “puritans”  as  they  called 
the  higher-class,  church-going  Americans;  partly  because  they 
were  supposed  to  object  to  innocent  amusements,  especially  beer¬ 
drinking,  and  partly  because  they  practiced  birth-control  in  a 
way  that  seemed  wicked  from  the  German  point  of  view ;  at  any 
rate  they  had  small  families. 

When  I  was  working  side  by  side  with  German  workmen  I 
heard  their  opinions  on  these  and  many  other  social  and  religious 
subjects,  expressed  very  freely.  A  few  of  the  better  educated  of 
the  workmen  (the  standard  of  education  was  not  high)  were 
free-thinkers  and  usually  socialists.  But  most  of  them  were 
simple  honest  workers,  somewhat  superstitious,  not  very  liberal 
in  thought  or  with  money,  rather  selfish,  saving  their  wages  yet 
having  a  good  time,  many  buying  a  little  home,  many  of  them 
hoping  for  a  little  place  in  the  country  for  their  old  age ;  mostly 
loyal  American  citizens  tho  they  always  used  the  hyphen.  The 
politicians  always  had  them  in  mind.  There  must  always  be  a 
good  share  of  German  names  on  the  ticket,  the  “German  vote” 
must  be  studied.  Their  instincts  were  naturally  towards  the 
democracy  and  against  republicanism,  which  they  associated  with 
the  “puritanism”  they  so  condemned;  but  there  had  been  many 


The  City  in  the  Eighties 


19 


German  soldiers  among  the  Northern  troops  who  would  meet  and 
talk  over  the  time  when  they  “fought  mit  Sigel”  and  Carl  Schurz; 
and  they  were  sometimes  induced  to  “vote  the  way  they  shot” ; 
against  the  “Solid  South”. 

Fortunately  they  divided  between  the  parties;  but  when  any 
project  endangered  their  “personal  liberty” ;  especially  when 
any  temperance  or  Sabbatarian  legislation  was  proposed;  except 
for  a  very  small  contingent  of  “Protestant  Reformed”  church 
members ;  they  voted  as  one  man.  And  those  of  the  working 
class  among  them  remained  German,  in  tastes,  habits  and  lan¬ 
guage.  Sometimes  tho  rarely  one  might  even  find  a  native-born 
adult  of  German  stock  who  could  speak  no  language  but  that  of 
his  fathers. 

Among  the  lower-class  Germans  there  was  a  tendency  to 
regard  their  children  as  income  producers  and  child  labor  was 
common.  A  poor  man  with  a  large  family  looked  forward  to  the 
day  when  he  might  give  up  work  and  have  his  children  support 
him.  An  applicant  for  relief  who  had  recently  buried  a  child, 
in  reciting  his  misfortune  mourned  that  he  had  nurtured  his  boy 
up  to  the  age  when  he  should  have  begun  to  work  for  him  “and 
then  he  went  and  died  on  me”.  But  there  was  not  much  charity 
asked  for  or  expected  among  the  German  poor.  Long  after  the 
Associated  Charities  began  it  was  noticeable  that  in  proportion 
to  ponulation  German  applicants  were  the  fewest. 

There  were  in  my  day  very  few  Italians,  Slavs  or  Greeks  in 
the  city  the  great  influx  of  people  from  Southern  and  Eastern 
Europe  had  not  begun.  There  were  many  of  Irish  birth  and  the 
usual  sprinkling  of  Scotch  and  English ;  but  the  National  Socie¬ 
ties,  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  Scandinavian,  Bohemian,  Polish  and 
others,  which  even  then  were  numerous  in  Chicago,  Cleveland 
and  some  other  large  Mid-Western  cities  and  play  so  important 
a  part  in  social  and  often  political  life,  were  non-existent  or  at 
least  inconspicuous.  The  German  element  was  so  strong  that  it 
unite  overshadowed  any  other  group  of  immigrant  people. 

Next  to  the  Germans  in  number  among  the  foreign  born  were 
the  Trish.  There  were  many  Catholic  churches  the  Cathedral 
chief  among  them  and  the  diocese  was  strong  and  wealthy.  Arch¬ 
bishop  Elder  was  a  broad-minded  and  public-spirited  ecclesiastic 


20 


The  Associated  Charities  op  Cincinnati 


and  he  encouraged  his  clergy  to  co-operate  with  the  Associated 
Charities. 

There  was  a  strong  infusion  of  Negroes,  enough  to  make  it 
necessary  to  have  white  and  colored  schools  something  which 
coming  from  Chicago,  I  had  not  seen  before  and  at  first  resented; 
altho  I  soon  was  convinced  that  it  is  better  to  separate  colored 
children  from  the  white.  In  my  early  days  in  Cincinnati  most  of 
the  middle  aged  and  elderly  Negroes  had  been  slaves  and  the 
humility  which  was  and  still  is  in  the  South,  the  Negro’s  chief 
virtue  in  the  white  man’s  estimation  was  still  evident. 

The  main  body  of  the  population  was  of  the  usual  American 
stock  from  New  England  and  New  York  found  in  the  Middle 
West.  Kentucky  was  just  across  the  river  and  a  good  many 
working  people  lived  in  Covington  and  Newport;  still  there  was 
no  notable  infusion  of  Southerners;  altho  among  the  applicants 
to  the  Associated  Charities  there  were  many  Southern-born  of 
the  class  called  in  the  South  "poor  whites”.  In  fact  these  and 
the  floating  river-people ;  living  in  "shanty  boats”,  slowly  drifting 
down  stream  from  the  head  waters  to  the  Mississippi,  living  by 
fishing,  stealing  and  begging,  only  occasionally  doing  a  few 
days  work  at  harvesting  in  summer,  tieing  up  in  some  good  river¬ 
side  city  like  Cincinnati,  Evansville  or  Louisville  for  the  winter ; 
gave  the  Associated  Charities  many  of  its  clients. 

There  were  many  people  of  culture  and  refinement  and  a  good 
deal  of  inherited  wealth,  altho  most  of  the  large  fortunes  had 
been  made  by  their  possessors. 

The  Jewish  element  was  strong  and  there  were  many  wealthy 
and  cultured  people  among  them  who  were  notable  for  liberality 
of  money  as  of  thought.  Every  subscription  list  for  charity  or 
other  social  purpose  had  many  Jewish  names;  their  own  chari¬ 
ties  were  numerous  and  liberally  supported. 

For  the  Mid-West  Cincinnati  was  a  comparatively  old  city. 
The  people  were  proud  of  their  title  of  "The  Queen  City”.  They 
were  enterprising  enough  to  tax  themselves  $20,000,000.00  to 
build  a  great  railway  to  open  up  territory  in  the  South;  and  the 
Queen  and  Crescent  Route  was  popular.  The  public  parks  were 
among  the  finest  of  the  country.  Fifty  gentlemen  dined  together 
one  day  and  gave  $1,000.00  each  to  build  an  Art  Museum  in  one 
of  them.  There  were  many  liberal  individual  givers. 


Beginning  the  Organization 


21 


When  great  floods  came  and  money  poured  in  for  relief  from 
all  over  the  country ;  the  relief  committee  used  every  penny  that 
came  from  outside  the  city  beyond  its  limits;  and  defrayed  the 
relief  of  their  own  citizens  exclusively  from  local  funds.  It 
seemed  a  city  where  the  best  of  social  work  ought  to  be  easy  to 
organize  and  support. 

Beginning  the  Organization 

A  group  of  cultured  people  who  came  mostly  from  New  Eng¬ 
land  attended  the  Unitarian  church  and  were  Mr.  Wendte’s  chief 
supporters  in  his  efforts  to  organize  the  charities.  As  is  often 
the  case  in  cities  when  Associated  Charities  begins,  the  Episco¬ 
palians  and  the  Unitarians  in  proportion  to  their  number  were 
the  most  prominent  of  the  church-going  people  among  its  mem¬ 
bers;  membership  in  such  societies  is  usually  composed  of  people 
who  go  to  church. 

In  those  days  the  three  most  striking  examples  of  charity 
organization  were  those  of  Boston,  Buffalo  and  Philadelphia. 
Mr.  Wendte  borrowed  the  name  from  Boston  and  the  plan  of 
organization  from  Philadelphia.  But  he  measured  the  city  along¬ 
side  Buffalo  and  hoped  to  emulate  the  work  of  the  C.  O.  S.  of 
that  city.  Tho  he  believed  in  and  emphasized  the  higher  doc¬ 
trines  of  family  welfare  work,  he  had  learned  the  remarkable 
economic  lesson  of  the  early  development  of  the  Buffalo  Charity 
Organization  Society  and  thought  that  a  similar  marvelous  show¬ 
ing  of  the  saving  of  wasted,  and  worse  than  wasted,  almsgiving- 
money  might  be  made  in  Cincinnati.  He  argued  that  if  Buffalo 
with  a  population  of  200,000  could  save  $ 125, 000. 00  in  the  first 
year  of  C.  O.  S. ;  then  Cincinnati  with  300,000  could  save  fiftv 
per-cent  more.  His  Buffalo  statistics  may  have  been  accurate 
but  his  estimate  for  Cincinnati  was  woefully  incorrect.  The  city 
had  a  very  different  population  and  different  social  conditions 
and  history. 

One  large  part  of  the  saving  in  Buffalo  was  in  the  amount  of 
outdoor  relief  distributed  by  the  official  whose  usual  picturesque 
name  in  that  city  was  “The  Poormaster”.  But  the  whole  outdoor 
relief  in  Cincinnati  had  rarely  exceeded  $15,000  per  annum, 
whereas  in  Buffalo  it  had  been  five  times  as  much.  In  Cincinnati 
there  were  few  of  the  private  charitable  societies  with  which 


22 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


Buffalo  was  richly  endowed  and  inevitably  as  there  was  less 
official  charity ,  either  public  or  private,  there  was  less  private 
almsgiving  *  There  could  be  no  such  demonstration  of  the  saving 
of  waste  as  had  been  made  in  Buffalo  because  there  was  not  the 
waste  to  save. 

From  the  undue  insistence  on  the  money-saving  possibilities 
of  organization,  there  came  some  results  which  hampered  the 
Associated  Charities  thru  many  years  of  its  history,  f  A  few  of 
its  warmest  first  supporters  were  chiefly  attracted  by  the  promise 
of  economy.  The  love  of  money  is  the  root  of  all  evil  and  the 
wealthy  man  who  joins  a  social  agency  in  the  hope  that  the  drain 
on  his  pocketbook  will  be  lessened  is  poor  timber  out  of  which  to 
make  either  a  subscriber  or  a  director. 

The  plan  of  organization  of  the  new  society  followed  the  pat¬ 
tern  set  by  the  Philadelphia  C.  O.  S.  which  was  perhaps  the  least 
effective  method  among  those  of  the  time.  At  the  head  was  a 
central  board  of  elected  members  with  others  delegated  by  social 
agencies  whose  co-operation  was  desired,  and  some  ex-officio 
members.  The  board  was  to  choose  the  officers  and  executive 
committee.  The  city  was  divided  into  twelve  districts  each  of 
two  wards;  each  with  its  directors,  agent  and  office;  to  do  the 
actual  work  and  to  collect  funds  in  its  own  territory.  The  execu¬ 
tive  was  to  collect,  for  administration  only,  “at  large”,  but  as  all 
the  “at  large”  was  within  a  district  which  had  its  own  collectors 
this  was  difficult.  Some  of  the  districts  had  many  poor  and  few 
rich;  in  some  the  conditions  were  reversed;  some  of  them  were 
distinctly  middle  class  with  few  of  either.  The  executive  com¬ 
mittee  was  to  direct  the  districts;  and  had  it  been  strong  and 
the  general  secretary  a  genius  the  plan  might  have  worked.  But 
neither  was  true.  The  executive  committee  did  not  even  have 
money  to  employ  a  full  time  secretary  until  it  got  a  windfall 
after  the  society  had  been  going  for  four  years. 

Of  course  on  such  a  plan  there  was  not  one  but  thirteen  socie¬ 
ties  in  the  same  city,  each  entitled  to  the  same  name  and  each 


*See  page  52. 

tOveremphasis  on  expected  financial  economy  has  had  similar  results 
in  other  fields.  The  work  of  child-placing  is  a  conspicuous  instance.  It 
was  not  until  the  National  Children’s  Home  Society  came  out  boldly  and 
declared  that  the  home-finding  plan  was  not  a  method  to  save  money,  but 
to  save  children,  that  its  work  was  put  on  its  sound  foundation. 


Beginning  the  Organization 


23 


doing  such  work  as  it  chose  or  as  the  funds  it  could  collect 
allowed;  some  fairly  good,  some  wretchedly  bad.  Some  of  the 
offices  were  open  two  hours  daily,  some  two  hours  of  three  days 
each  week.  Agents’  salaries  were  pitifully  inadequate;  from 
$12.00  to  $30.00  per  month.  One  of  the  agents  was  a  physician 
and  assistant  health  officer;  he  gave  two  hours  daily  for  $25.00 
per  month;  another  was  a  young  lawyer  who  did  the  same;  the 
other  agents  were  women  giving  one-half  to  full  time  service.  In 
the  central  office  a  pile  of  case  records  accumulated  to  which 
nobody  paid  any  attention ;  not  even  the  general  secretary  after 
be  had  filed  them;  he  was  a  young  lawyer  who  sat  in  the  office 
from  8  to  10  a.  m.  daily. 

In  those  days  fifteen  years  before  the  first  School  of  Phil¬ 
anthropy,  trained  service  outside  one  or  two  large  cities  was 
unknown;  except  as  the  Boston  A.  C.  did  occasionally  let  an 
assistant  agent  slip  away;  but  these  were  few  and  none  of  them 
came  so  far  West  as  Ohio.  Under  such  conditions  it  was  possible 
perhaps  to  do  some  fairly  good  relief  work.  But  the  fine-spun 
theories  of  co-operation  and  preventive  and  constructive  social 
work,  which  had  never  been  more  than  talking  points  for  promo¬ 
tion,  were  quickly  forgotten  and  decadence  set  in  from  the  first 
days.  The  society  was  like  Rosalind’s  medlar  in  As  You  Like  It, 
“rotten  before  it’s  half  ripe”. 

It  is  not  any  wonder  that  in  Cincinnati  the  name  “Associated 
Charities”,  in  spite  of  much  talk  and  many  pamphlets,  almost 
from  its  inception  meant  little  but  a  rather  crude  almsgiving 
agency;  nor  that  excellent  societies  like  that  of  Boston  should 
bewail  the  fact  that  people  stole  their  nice  name  and  misused  it 
so  sadly.  Nor  is  it  remarkable  when  we  think  how  often  similar 
things  have  happened  that  the  name  “Associated  Charities”  is 
now  rarely  chosen  by  a  new  organization  for  family  welfare 
work;  nor  that  the  Boston  A.  C.  should  give  up  the  old  name 
as  too  badly  spoiled  for  its  use. 

The  name  of  a  society  soon  means  to  the  general  public  and 
to  its  own  agents,  not  what  it  professed  or  intended  to  do  but 
what  it  does.  The  name  “Charity  Organization  Society”  once 
meant  a  co-operative  organization  of  the  benevolent  agencies 
public  and  private  of  a  city,  for  the  common  good,  and  the  pre¬ 
vention  of  pauperism  by  relieving  distress  and  discovering  and 


24  The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 

removing  its  causes.  Associated  Charities”  meant  the  same  with 
an  added  stress  on  the  work  of  volunteers  in  the  promotion  of 
neighborliness,  and  especially  to  give  each  family  in  trouble  a 
wise  and  helpful  friend.  Now,  in  some  places;  there  are  many 
brilliant  exceptions;  both  names  mean  a  society  to  give  relief 
with  or  without  care  and  adequacy.  A  social  worker  whose  expe¬ 
rience  had  been  in  the  smaller  towns,  speaking  of  the  niggardly 
and  careless  giving  of  relief  by  a  certain  Red  Cross  chapter  said 
as  the  utmost  expression  of  scorn,  “it’s  just  a  nasty  little  Asso¬ 
ciated  Charities  over  again”.  The  New  “Leagues  for  Social 
Service”,  etc.,  which  are  springing  up  all  over  the  country  mean 
almost  what  C.  O.  S.  and  A.  C.  once  professed.  Most  of  them 
recognize  relief  as  one  of  their  functions.*  Will  they  follow  the 
downward  path  of  their  immediate  predecessors ;  as  those  did  of 
their  more  remote  forerunners,  the  A.  I.  C.  P.’s,  Provident  Asso¬ 
ciations,  Relief  Unions?  If  they  escape  that  fate  it  will  be 
because  as  many  of  their  predecessors  did  not,  they  recognize  and 
live  up  to  the  truth  that  relief  is  a  means  not  an  end;  and  still 
more  because  they  shall  undertake  attractive  and  positive  work 
in  other  forms  of  social  benefit ;  forms  which  shall  be  so  concrete 
and  so  easily  understood  by  the  public  that  instead  of  being  over¬ 
shadowed  by  relief  they  shall  quite  overshadow  it  to  the  public 
eye. 

Will  the  beautiful  and  luminous  term  “home  service”  which 
the  Red  Cross  made  popular  in  1917  and  1918,  go  down  in  a 
similar  degradation?  Alas!  the  Salvation  Army  has  already 
adopted  it  for  its  family  relief  work,  the  army  which  cannot 
co-operate  in  welfare  work  with  the  Red  Cross  because,  so  said 
one  of  its  captains  in  a  southern  city,f  “we  do  not  believe  in 
investigation  and  you  do”. 

In  February  1883,  came  a  great  flood  in  the  Ohio  valley  and 
the  sympathy  of  the  nation  flowed  to  the  city  of  Cincinnati.  A 
Committee  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  and  the  City  Council 
undertook  relief  work  and  the  Associated  Charities  districts 
helped.  Many  people  who  were  interested  in  organized  charity 
all  over  the  country  instead  of  giving  to  the  general  relief  fund 


*See  note  on  page  50. 
tBaton  Rouge,  La. 


The  Great  Flood  Relief 


25 


sent  money  to  the  A.  C.  and  when  the  distress  was  over  a  snm  of 
about  |1800.00  was  left  in  its  treasury. 

For  the  first  time  since  the  society  began  the  executive  com¬ 
mittee  found  itself  able  to  employ  a  full-time  general  secretary. 
I  was  still  in  the  manufacturing  department  of  the  clothing  busi¬ 
ness  and  spending  some  leisure  hours  as  a  friendly  visitor  of  the 
Associated  Charities,  altho  I  was  no  longer  with  a  “five-day 
house”  as  I  had  been  when  I  began  as  a  volunteer  two  years 
earlier.  I  was  chosen  partly  because  of  my  work  with  the  society, 
partly  because  I  had  some  fluency  of  speech,  and  partly  because 
it  was  thought  I  could  afford  to  work  for  the  small  salary  which 
was  all  the  committee  dared  offer.  I  was  also  supposed  to  be 
fairly  trustworthy  and  reasonably  intelligent. 

I  began  at  once  to  visit  and  try  to  inspire  the  districts  and 
to  make  over  the  central  registration.  The  districts  were  small 
and  families  were  frequently  moving  across  the  lines  appearing 
to  their  new  district  office  as  new  cases.  The  records  had  been 
so  carelessly  made  and  so  poorly  kept  that  it  was  often  impossible 
to  identify  a  family  by  its  card.  As  the  register  approached  com¬ 
pletion  it  was  found  that  many  families  had  received  similar 
casual  treatment  from  three,  four  or  five  districts  successivelv, 
with  no  knowledge  of  what  had  been  done  before;  so  that  not 
even  the  districts  of  the  same  society  were  co-operating. 

As  the  districts  had  so  far  been  without  control  they  resented 
even  positive  advice  especially  from  a  new  official.  Few  of  the 
agents  had  the  faintest  conception  of  what  co-operation  means. 
The  volunteer  committees  with  one  or  two  exceptions  were  like 
the  agents.  We  had  no  president  and  the  three  vice-presidents 
were  dignified,  cultured  gentlemen  from  whom  no  aggressive 
action  could  be  hoped.  The  degree  of  tact  needed  by  any  one  who 
was  to  engineer  the  society  to  success  seemed  more  than  human. 
I  began  after  a  few  weeks  to  wonder  whether  I  was  not  one  of 
those  who  “rush  in  where  angels  fear  to  tread”. 

The  Great  Flood  Relief 

But  as  the  aftermath  of  one  disaster  had  given  the  committee 
the  means  to  pay  a  secretary  so  that  of  a  second  made  the  cen¬ 
tral  work  possible.  I  began  work  on  January  1,  1884,  and  before 
the  end  of  the  month  the  river  began  to  rise.  By  the  first  of 


26 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


February  the  danger  point  was  reached.  On  February  2d,  I 
called  on  the  chairman  of  the  relief  committee  of  1883,  and  others 
and  told  them  that  the  coming  flood  would  be  worse  than  that  of 
the  previous  year.  I  based  my  statement  on  the  fact  that  the 
tributaries  on  both  sides  of  the  Ohio  were  swelling;  in  ’83  the 
flood  came  from  only  one  side  of  the  great  basin.  I  was  laughed 
at  because  the  rise  of  ’83  had  been  the  greatest  in  fifty  years; 
yet  when  the  highest  point  was  reached  in  ’84,  it  exceeded  that 
of  ’83  by  more  than  six  feet. 

By  the  6th  of  February  it  was  impossible  to  ignore  the  dis¬ 
aster  and  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  summoned  the  City  Council 
to  a  meeting  to  take  measures  for  relief.  While  that  meeting 
was  in  session  the  district  chairmen  of  the  A.  C.  met  with  the 
executive  committee  in  the  central  office.  It  was  a  critical  moment 
in  the  history  of  the  society  and  in  the  life  of  its  new  and  untried 
secretary.  The  experience  of  the  previous  year  had  proved  that 
decentralized  work  would  not  do,  that  the  districts  must  be 
controlled  if  great  waste  was  to  be  averted. 

I  urged  the  committee  to  face  the  situation  boldly  and  to  offer 
to  the  relief  committee  to  do  the  work  if  they  would  furnish  the 
funds.  The  committee  dreaded  the  responsibility  but  at  last 
yielded  to  my  urgency  and  with  much  trepidation  made  the  offer. 
Fortunately  for  them  and  still  more  for  me  it  was  not  accepted 
as  made  but  with  modifications.  The  flood  committee  agreed  to 
establish  headquarters  which  should  be  strictly  a  wholesale 
depot ;  from  which  it  would  furnish  to  the  A.  C. ;  dealing  exclu¬ 
sively  with  the  central  executive  committee;  such  supplies  of 
bread,  cooked  meat,  coffee,  sugar,  beans,  rice,  potatoes,  salt,  flour, 
blankets,  and  mattresses,  as  it  should  requisition  and  to  pay  bills 
approved  by  the  A.  C.  for  fuel  and  medicine.  The  A.  C.  agreed 
to  make  adequate  investigation  before  any  but  a  minimum  of  the 
relief  alleged  to  be  needed  was  given  and  to  avoid  duplication. 
When  the  flood  committee  issued  its  report  it  said  that  this 
arrangement  had  saved  them  more  than  $25,000.00  as  compared 
with  the  work  of  the  previous  year;  and  it  also  gave  special  com¬ 
mendation  to  the  work  of  the  secretary. 

The  water  drove  more  than  20,000  people  from  their  homes 
and  cut  off  30,000  more  from  their  places  of  work.  All  the 
factories,  B.  R.  shops,  depots,  gas-works  and  similar  industries 


The  Great  Flood  Relief 


27 


were  inundated.  The  city  went  back  to  coal  oil  for  its  lighting. 
Many  of  the  refugees  were  housed  with  friends  in  districts  above 
the  flood  level.  Many  were  lodged  in  school-houses,  halls,  and 
churches.  Some  took  refuge  in  the  upper  stories  of  factories 
where  they  could  be  reached  only  by  boat. 

The  city  council  voted  a  credit  to  the  relief  fund  of  $25,000.00, 
of  which  about  $7,500.00  was  used  towards  the  end  of  the  work. 
The  disaster  was  a  spectacular  one  and  money  flowed  in  from 
all  over  the  country.  All  the  relief  within  the  city  was  defrayed 
by  contributions  of  citizens.  All  money  that  came  from  outside 
was  used  beyond  the  city  limits,  up  and  down  the  river  for 
twenty  miles  and  more.  This  was  done  by  a  fleet  of  boats  under 
a  volunteer  commodore  which  were  also  busy  for  the  people 
marooned  in  high  buildings  in  flooded  territory.  The  Red  Cross 
was  also  at  work  on  the  river;  this  was  my  first  contact  with 
the  society  in  whose  service  thirty-eight  years  later,  I  ended  my 
adventures  as  an  official  in  social  welfare. 

For  the  first  time  since  the  society  began,  the  districts  became 
subject  to  the  control  of  the  executive  committee.  I  persuaded 
the  committee  to  declare  itself  in  permanent  session  until  the 
river  should  go  down,  and  then  to  act  promptly  or  to  sanction  my 
acts,  sometimes  on  important  question's  of  policy.  Even  a 
change  in  the  complicated  district  boundaries,  to  make  it  easier 
to  direct  applicants  to  the  proper  office;  was  made  by  a  vote  of 
two  members  after  I  had  actually  put  it  in  operation.  So  close 
were  some  of  the  risks  I  ran  that  when  it  was  all  over  I  won¬ 
dered  how  I  had  dared  to  take  them. 

Seven  of  the  districts  included  flooded  territory ;  others  lodged 
many  refugees ;  all  had  residents  cut  off  from  work ;  so  each  had 
some  flood-relief  to  give.  They  were  enjoined  to  keep  offices  open 
daily  from  seven  to  six ;  were  furnished  with  a  schedule  of  rations 
for  the  different  sizes  of  families  and  told  to  restrict  their  work 
to  their  own  territory,  counting  all  refugees  as  belonging  where 
they  were  found;  and  to  actually  visit  each  case  before  more 
than  an  emergency  half-day’s  ration  was  issued. 

Most  of  the  districts  complied  at  once  but  a  few  resented  dic¬ 
tation  and  proposed  to  do  their  work  in  their  own  way.  One 
of  those  which  had  no  flooded  territory  declined  to  keep  its  office 
open  all  day.  One  morning  a  member  of  the  city  council ;  many 
of  whom  resented  the  control  of  the  relief  by  the  Associated 


28  The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 

Charities ;  appeared  at  headquarters,  bringing  a  refugee  who  was 
lodged  in  the  recalcitrant  district  and  who  reported  that  the 
office  was  closed.  The  councilman  loudly  demanded  food  and 
blankets  for  the  family.  I  sent  the  applicant  back  to  the  district 
office  telling  him  I  would  be  there  before  him;  called  a  young- 
man  who  was  waiting  in  hope  of  a  job  and  started  on  a  run. 
(This  was  before  the  day  of  the  auto.)  It  was  a  mile  away  but 
I  made  it  in  ten  minutes,  found  the  door  locked  and  as  I  had  no 
key  kicked  it  open.  I  installed  the  boy  with  instructions  about 
taking  applications  carefully,  getting  surnames  and  given  names 
of  each  member  of  the  alleged  family  with  accurate  addresses; 
and  issuing  the  emergency  half-day’s  ration  (there  was  plenty 
of  supplies  on  hand).  Then  I  hurried  back  and  wrote  a  report 
of  my  action  to  the  chairman  of  the  district,  telling  him  politely 
but  firmly,  that  if  he  did  not  keep  the  office  open  as  ordered  by 
the  executive  committee,  I  should  be  obliged  to  rent  a  vacant 
store  in  the  same  block  install  my  own  clerks  and  put  the  district 
out  of  business  so  far  as  flood-relief  went.  He  sent  as  polite  a 
reply  regretting  “the  mistake”  and  promising  to  comply  with  all 
orders  from  the  executive.  When  we  began  really  doing  the  cen¬ 
tral  work  a  few  weeks  later  this  district  became  one  of  the  most 
loyal  and  co-operative.  Tact  is  essential  but  sometimes  the  iron 
hand  must  make  itself  felt  under  the  velvet  glove. 

As  soon  as  it  was  known  that  relief  was  being  given  on  a 
liberal  scale,  the  city  was  inundated  by  a  human  flood  of  tramps 
and  derelicts  from  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Indiana,  and  states  farther 
away.  A  warehouse  on  the  market  square  was  equipped  and  all 
comers  fed  liberally  three  times  daily.  The  tables  seated  six 
hundred  and  for  weeks  they  were  filled  twice  at  each  meal  hour. 
The  sight  of  these  hundreds  of  able-bodied  rough-looking  fellows 
waiting  on  the  sidewalk  for  the  tables  to  be  emptied  of  the  first 
comers,  was  one  never  to  be  forgotten.  They  were  lodged  in 
the  police  stations  and  cheap  lodging  houses.  The  day  after  the 
water  went  down  the  foreman  of  a  factory  wanted  laborers  to 
clean  out  the  deposit  of  mud  on  his  floors.  He  went  in  the  morn¬ 
ing  to  the  Harrison  St.  station  where  one  hundred  and  eighty- five 
men  had  slept  in  the  tramps’  room  and  offered  to  pay  $2.00  per 
day ;  a  high  wage  for  common  labor  in  1884 ;  but  only  three  men 
accepted  the  job.  The  free  meals  were  still  available. 


The  Great  Flood  Relief  29 

Along  with  money  contributions  came  a  great  supply  of 
clothing  which  the  railroads  carried  free.  Boxes,  barrels  and 
bales  came  from  Maine,  Florida,  Oregon  and  states  between. 
This  began  to  accumulate  at  headquarters  and  the  chairman  of 
the  flood  committee  asked  me  to  remove  it.  I  promised  to  do  it 
“tomorrow”  but  failed.  I  wanted  to  have  the  clothing  sorted 
before  distributing  it  to  the  districts  and  had  no  place  to  put  it. 
The  next  day  he  was  urgent  so  I  called  one  of  my  lieutenants 
told  him  to  have  it  loaded  (there  was  already  a  big  two-horse 
dray  load)  and  to  drive  slowly  up  Race  St.  to  Sixth,  along  Sixth 
to  Center  Ave.,  to  Fifth,  to  Race  and  so  on  till  I  stopped  him. 
Then  I  ran  out  to  find  a  place  which  I  did  within  two  squares 
rented  it  and  caught  the  dray  before  it  had  made  the  first  turn. 
I  phoned  a  high-school  boy  upon  whom  I  could  depend,  and  told 
him  to  recruit  a  force  of  his  school-fellows  boys  and  girls  and 
set  them  to  work  unpacking  and  sorting.  They  were  busy  within 
two  hours  after  the  dray  was  loaded  at  headquarters.  Much  of 
the  clothing  was  good  and  clean  but  much  was  unfit  for  human 
use  and  we  sold  more  than  a  ton  of  rags. 

No  appeal  for  funds  was  made  by  the  A.  C.  but  as  happened 
the  previous  year  many  people  from  a  distance  preferred  sending 
money  to  the  society  instead  of  to  the  flood  committee,  so  that  we 
were  able  to  hire  some  extra  help,  pay  sundry  expenses  and  to 
supplement  the  coarse  ration  of  the  flood-relief,  adding  milk  and 
canned  goods.  Very  little  hired  help  was  required,  there  were 
sometimes  more  volunteers  than  it  was  easy  to  keep  busy.  I  had 
as  my  most  faithful  lieutenant  the  managing  partner  of  a  large 
wholesale  firm. 

About  the  middle  of  the  second  week  of  the  flood  relief  about 
half  past  five  one  evening  when  business  was  quieting  down;  a 
few  members  of  the  central  flood  committee  were  sitting  round 
the  stove  swapping  yarns.  Some  of  the  members  of  the  common 
council  were  much  distressed  because  the  relief  committee  had 
control  of  the  city’s  contribution  so  that  they  could  not  use  it 
with  their  constituents  to  strengthen  their  political  fences.  One 
of  these  from  the  Fifth  ward  came  in  with  a  lurid  story  of  two 
dozen  or  more  families  occupying  the  upper  floors  of  Mosler’s 
Safe  Factory  who  were  without  the  necessaries  of  life.  He 
demanded  blankets,  mattresses,  meat,  bread  and  whatever  was  to 


30 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


be  had,  for  them.  John  L.  Stettinius  was  one  of  the  flood-com¬ 
mittee  present  and  a  member  of  the  A.  C.  He  said  to  me  that 
this  was  an  exceptional  case ;  he  agreed  that  the  man  was  a  faker 
but  he  was  a  councilman,  and  there  might  be  people  suffering  and 
we  must  break  our  rules  about  retail  distribution  and  investiga¬ 
tion  and  give  him  what  he  asked ;  that  we  must  temporize  a  little 
with  the  politicians  just  this  once. 

Then  Mr.  Stettinius  turned  away  to  talk  to  the  rest  of  the 
committee  and  while  his  back  was  turned  I  sent  off  the  council¬ 
man  with  one  of  my  boys,  to  go  in  a  boat  to  the  factory  and  get 

the  facts.  When  Mr.  Stettinius  found  I  had  sent  the  man  away 

* 

he  got  a  little  excited  but  I  urged  a  few  minutes  patience.  In 
twenty  minutes  my  boy  and  the  councilman  were  back  and  his 
story  of  many  families  and  hundreds  of  people  was  whittled 
down  to  seven  families  of  twenty-three  individuals  all  of  whom 
had  saved  their  bedding;  they  had  plenty  of  bread,  coffee  and 
sugar  but  the  boat  which  delivered  meat  had  missed  them  that 
day.  A  few  pounds  of  boiled  ham  satisfied  the  demand  which 
would  have  taken  many  dollars  worth  of  supplies  to  fill  if  not 
investigated. 

Then  Mr.  Stettinius  turned  to  the  other  members  of  the  com¬ 
mittee  ;  some  of  whom  were  only  recent  converts  to  the  A.  C.  way 
of  doing  business  and  not  over  enthusiastic  about  it;  with  a  lec¬ 
ture  on  the  advantage  of  our  insistence  on  investigation;  how 
we  had  saved  much  waste  by  simply  doing  things  in  a  thoroly 
business-like  manner — I  refrained  from  saying  “I  told  you  so”. 

Many  other  people  came  to  the  wholesale  depot  for  retail 
supplies  and  had  to  be  met  and  directed  to  a  district  office  often 
to  their  serious  displeasure.  Most  of  this  came  to  my  lot  to  do. 
Only  once  did  I  let  an  applicant  leave  the  store  mad  and  I  ran 
up  the  street  after  her  and  managed  to  smooth  her  over  and 
send  her  on  her  way  laughing.  She  was  a  stout  old  Irishwoman 
of  the  kind  with  whom  a  joke  is  always  available  if  its  point  is 
plain  enough.  The  chairman  of  the  flood-committee  told  his 
wife,  who  told  mine,  that  he  could  not  understand  how  that  man 
Johnson  kept  his  temper  and  never  got  red  hot.  The  secret  was 
an  easy  one.  I  did  not  get  red-hot  because  I  was  white- hot  all  the 
time. 

I  lived  on  one  of  the  Western  hilltops  and  only  went  home 


The  Great  Flood  Relief 


31 


once  in  the  three  weeks  of  the  heavy  relief  work.  To  get  there  I 
had  to  cross  two  big  bodies  of  water  in  boats  and  walk  a  mile  or 
more  as  few  of  the  street  cars  were  running.  Some  nights  I  went 
to  a  hotel  but  they  were  all  so  overcrowded  with  business  men 
who  could  not  easily  reach  their  homes  that  a  bale  of  blankets 
at  the  relief  depot  was  even  more  agreeable  as  a  bed. 

It  was  a  hectic  time  for  three  weeks  but  it  was  of  the  utmost 
benefit  to  the  society.  Without  some  such  emergency  it  would 
never  have  been  possible  to  unify  the  work.  With  it  the  dis¬ 
tricts  got  the  habit  of  regarding  the  central  committee;  and  with 
tact  they  were  kept  to  some  extent  in  the  same  habit.  Incidentally 
it  had  much  effect  in  settling  me  in  my  newly  adopted  profession. 

As  the  water  went  down  the  work  of  repairing  and  restoring 
damaged  homes  of  poor  people  began.  This  was  done  by  the  dis¬ 
trict  committees  and  paid  for  by  the  flood-committee  on  my 
approval  of  the  bills.  Three  of  the  districts  had  much  territory 
of  small  cottages,  many  of  them  owned  by  their  working  class 
occupants.  No  better  use  of  charitable  funds  could  be  made 
than  to  restore  these  homes.  Some  applications  for  help  of  this 
kind  were  made  by  well-to-do  people  so  that  careful  investigations 
were  necessary.  It  was  hard  to  convince  such  people  that  the 
flood  relief  was  not  a  free  insurance  fund. 

When  the  house  repairing  was  well  under  way  the  flood  com¬ 
mittee,  intending  to  wind  up  its  business ;  called  for  an  estimate 
of  how  much  each  district  would  need  to  finish  the  work  promis¬ 
ing  to  give  them  what  they  asked  on  my  approval.  I  begged 
them  not  to  take  this  course.  The  money  voluntarily  subscribed 
was  all  spent.  They  were  beginning  on  the  council’s  appropria¬ 
tion.  I  told  them  that  so  far  I  could  guarantee  that  every  dollar 
had  been  properly  used;  but  that  if  the  districts  had  to  estimate 
for  work  still  to  be  done  they  would  feel  compelled  to  ask  for  a 
safe  amount.  The  result  would  be  that  their  treasuries  would 
contain  left-over  flood-relief  money  and  that  from  the  council’s 
appropriation;  which  would  be  bad  for  the  reputation  of  the 
Associated  Charities  and  worse  for  the  morale  of  the  district 
directors.  But  the  committee  had  decided;  we  had  to  comply 
and  the  districts  sent  in  their  estimates. 

Some  interesting  sidelights  on  human  nature  appeared.  One 
district,  in  the  best  residence  part  of  the  city  with  no  flooded 


32 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


territory  and  no  after-flood  work  to  do;  asked  for  $500  on  the 
theory  that  they  might  as  well  get  some  of  what  was  going.  As 
the  district  chairman  was  a  prominent  banker  and  an  influential 
member  of  my  church  I  got  the  chairman  of  the  flood-committee 
to  relieve  me  of  the  onus  of  disallowing  the  estimate  by  advising 
the  district  chairman  to  withdraw  it. 

One  of  the  flooded  districts  gave  me  a  lesson  in  pauperization 
which  I  have  used  a  hundred  times  in  lecturing  at  the  schools  of 
philanthropy  and  in  other  places.  This  was  in  a  middle-class 
and  thrifty  .part  of  the  city,  the  population  mostly  German 
nearly  all  working  people.  Its  chairman  was  a  contractor  who 
took  personal  charge  of  the  repair  work  giving  his  services.  It 
included  replacing  houses  on  their  foundations ;  moving  some  that 
had  floated  away;  several  which  had  turned  over  on  their  sides 
were  replaced.  The  estimate  had  been  liberal;  the  work  was 
economically  done  and  the  district  retained  in  its  treasury  a  bal¬ 
ance  much  larger  than  the  amount  it  had  usually  spent  for 
salary  and  relief  during  a  year’s  operation. 

When  active  work  began  in  the  fall  as  there  was  a  full  treas¬ 
ury  the  directors  omitted  their  usual  collecting.  The  easily 
gotten  money  was  spent  freely  and  before  Spring  the  funds  were 
gone,  the  directors  had  lost  the  habit  of  collecting  which  was  all 
they  had  ever  done;  and  the  district  surrendered  and  never 
resumed  activity.  It  was  pauperized  out  of  existence  by  easy 
money  to  which  it  was  really  not  entitled. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  often  things  like  this  happen. 
As  my  story  shows,  the  central  work  of  the  society  in  Cincinnati 
was  financed  by  surplus  funds  contributed  for  disaster  relief ; 
money  which  perhaps  ought  to  have  been  returned  to  the  givers ; 
and,  as  I  show  later,  it  lacked  the  stability  which  a  more  deter¬ 
mined  method  of  securing  support  would  have  given  it.  The 
most  flagrant  instance  of  the  kind  of  which  I  have  known  occurred 
after  the  great  fire  of  Chicago;  in  this  case  the  society  survived 
but  its  work  went  down  to  extreme  inefficiency.  It  is  rare  indeed 
when  an  agency,  which  should  by  its  nature  be  supported  by 
regular  contributions  from  interested  members,  gets  any  real 
benefit  or  even  escapes  disaster  when  some  windfall  comes  to  it. 
The  law  of  vigorous  life  is  the  law  of  self-help  with  men  or  with 


The  Great  Flood  Relief 


33 


associations  of  men.  Each  may  easily  be  weakened  by  outside 
help;  each  is  liable  to  pauperization. 

We  seldom  see  a  church  which  is  mainly  supported  by  some 
pious  millionaire  amount  to  very  much ;  and  this  is  not  wholly 
because  of  the  rich  man’s  meddling  or  dictation ;  it  is  because  the 
other  members  lose  their  independence  and  their  energy.  Similar 
weakening  and  deterioration  happens  to  an  institution  which 
becomes  completely  endowed  so  that  it  can  run  without  having 
to  justify  its  existence  to  the  minds  of  supporters.  It  is  cus¬ 
tomary  to  speak  ill  of  enormous  endowments  because  they  become 
obsolete;  but  the  evil  results  begin  long  before  obsolescence  sets 
in ;  the  fact  of  complete  endowment  is  the  hurtful  one.  Only 
what  we  earn  by  exertion  or  purchase  by  sacrifice  does  us  any 
good.  Nature  gives  us  nothing  for  nothing ;  what  we  do  not  pay 
for  in  effort  we  pay  for  in  loss  or  deterioration. 

There  were  other  evidences  of  the  pauperizing  effects  of  alms. 
Surely  there  can  be  no  question  that  in  the  face  of  a  great  calam¬ 
ity  relief  must  be  liberal ;  if  ever  it  is  justified  it  must  be  in  such 
cases.  Yet  even  in  these  we  find  evil  results.  Families  were 
found  who  in  1883  had  refused  at  first  to  accept  relief  calling 
it  “charity” ;  and  who  only  took  it  when  the  emergency  became 
dire;  yet  who,  in  1884,  were  among  the  first  to  apply.  The  taste 
for  alms  seems  like  the  tiger’s  taste  for  human  blood.  A  story 
is  told  of  an  old  woman,  in  1884,  sitting  on  the  steps  of  Rat  Row 
a  tenement  house  beside  the  river  watching  the  water  rise  and 
saying  “the  blessed  flood,  it’s  come  agin” ;  she  had  enjoyed  a  few 
weeks  of  super  abundant  food  without  labor  the  year  before. 

The  Red  Cross  which  has  reduced  disaster  relief  to  a  science 
warns  its  officers  that  the  most  critical  period  in  an  undertaking 
of  the  sort  is  when  the  real  need  is  met  and  relief  should  cease. 
The  human  tendency  to  dependence  is  so  strong  that  drastic 
measures  are  sometimes  needed  to  induce  those  who  have  been 
fed  without  labor  to  go  back  to  it. 

Associating  the  Districts 

When  the  strenuous  days  of  the  flood  were  over  and  I  began 
to  use  the  newly  gained  control  over  the  districts  I  realized  how 
little  I  knew.  I  did  not  know  my  job  and  I  had  no  way  of  learn- 


34 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


ing  it  but  by  doing  it.  The  committee  would  have  given  me 
clerical  help  but  I  felt  unable  to  direct  subordinates  so  I  set  to 
work  to  do  it  alone. 

I  had  been  for  years  engaged  in  a  mechanical  task,  which, 
while  it  required  accurate  co-ordination  of  eye  and  hand,  made 
little  demand  on  my  brain ;  so  I  had  added  to  my  daily  ten  hours 
handwork  four  more  two  reading  law  and  two  studying  short¬ 
hand.  Even  then  I  had  a  little  leisure  for  my  A.  C.  friendly 
visiting.  *  My  hours  of  reading  were  in  the  street-car  morning 
and  evening  and  during  the  noon  hour.  Now  in  my  new  occu¬ 
pation  I  had  so  little  judgment  that  I  thought  I  could  work 
fourteen  hours  daily  at  one  task  and  that  one  requiring  con¬ 
tinual  mental  effort.  Sometimes  I  greatly  exceeded  the  fourteen 
hours  even  on  one  or  two  occasions  when  preparing  for  some  sup¬ 
posedly  important  meeting,  working  for  thirty-six  hours  at  a 
stretch  with  only  brief  intervals  for  meals. 

Then  too  my  executive  committee  did  not  lend  me  any  driv¬ 
ing  power.  I  felt  compelled  to  be  not  only  all  the  machinery  but 
the  fire  under  the  boiler  as  well.  Of  course  all  this  was  rank 
folly  or  dense  ignorance  and  of  course  I  soon  broke  down.  When 
the  break  came  and  I  had  to  spend  some  days  in  bed,  I  got  one  of 
the  most  salutary  lessons  of  my  life.  I  dropped  a  big  load  of 
work  that  seemed  essential;  and  nothing  happened.  Nobody 
cared  nobody  knew  but  myself  that  the  work  I  had  been  killing 
myself  with  was  dropped.  I  found  the  world  could  get  along  very 
well  without  me  that  I  was  not  nearly  the  important  person  I 
had  assumed  to  be.  Luckily  my  recuperative  power  was  good 
and  a  few  days  complete  rest  made  me  able  to  face  the  world 
again.  The  lesson  I  learned  lasted  me  for  a  few  years  until 
another  crisis  brought  me  to  the  verge  of  another  break. 

For  the  next  two  years  the  Associated  Charities  went  on  with 
a  varying  fortune.  I  got  some  clerical  help.  Some  newly 
appointed  district  agents  and  a  few  of  the  old  ones  came  to  me 
for  advice  and  training  and  in  teaching  them  I  learned  a  little 
myself.  To  really  understand  social  work  we  must  begin  at 
the  bottom ;  we  must  come  in  actual  contact  with  the  clients  and 
their  needs.  There  are  advantages  which  befall  the  secretary 
of  a  small  or  a  poor  organization  who  is  therefore  obliged  to 
take  a  share  of  actual  case  work,  which  one  who  has  charge  of  a 


Associating  the  Districts 


35 


large  and  wealthy  society  unless  he  is  wise  and  determined  usually 
misses.  I  knew  the  life  of  working  people  because  I  had  shared 
it  but  I  knew  little  about  poverty.  Now  I  learned  to  see  things 
as  they  really  were  and  found  more  wisdom  from  intimate  con¬ 
tact  with  poor  people  than  I  ever  could  have  gained  from  the 
best  and  most  scientific  books  on  Principles  of  Relief  or  even 
Social  Diagnosis  taken  without  the  contacts  which  make  their 
science  alive ;  or  even  from  the  debates  at  the  National  Confer¬ 
ence. 

This  does  not  mean  to  detract  in  the  least  from  the  value  of 
book  knowledge.  Our  scientific  writers;  who  have  also  had  the 
original  contacts  in  their  own  experience;  interpret  for  us  many 
things  which  we  observe  and  yet  do  not  see  their  real  implica¬ 
tions.  In  this  the  study  of  social  work  resembles  the  study  of 
medicine.  The  medical  student  must  have  his  clinical  instruc¬ 
tion  ;  and  the  social  worker  who  misses  the  first-hand  knowledge 
which  comes  of  actual  case-work,  is  poorly  equipped,  either  for 
the  lowly  office  of  a  district  agent  or  the  high  one  of  executive 
of  a  large  society. 

I  remember  a  lesson  on  the  care  of  the  aged  poor  which  I  got 
one  day  from  one  of  them.  She  was  an  old  Irishwoman  who  had 

lived  a  hard  and  painful  life;  one  of  the  decent,  cleanly,  patient, 

♦ 

hard-working,  uncomplaining  kind;  to  whom  charity  is  so  repel¬ 
lent,  so  distasteful.  Her  tiny  room  where  she  lived  all  alone, 
her  boys  and  girls  all  gone  far  away  or  dead ;  tho  bare  of  all  but 
the  simplest  requirements  was  exquisitely  neat  and  clean. 

She  had  been  living  rent  free  in  one  of  Reuben  Springer’s 
numerous  tenement  houses  and  like  many  more  poor  people  was 
mourning  his  death.  Few  people  besides  his  tenants  and  his 
agent  knew  of  his  benevolences,  of  the  scores  of  poor  folks  who 
could  not  pay  their  rent  and  whom  he  would  never  allow  to  be 
evicted.  She  earned  a  few  cents  daily  just  enough  for  food 
making  fine  Irish  lace  which  she  sold  to  a  store-keeper  who  made 
a  handsome  profit  on  it.  Now  Mr.  Springer  was  dead  and  his 
estate  began  collecting  back  rents  and  she  applied  to  the  Asso¬ 
ciated  Charities  for  help. 

I  took  the  case  myself  as  I  did  so  far  as  possible  before  refer¬ 
ring  them  to  the  districts,  with  all  that  came  to  the  central 
office;  and  I  made  the  first  visit.  Her  efforts  to  keep  her  own 


36 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


little  dwelling-place,  so  bare  of  comforts  and  yet  “home”  to  her, 
were  so  pathetic  and  seemed  so  futile.  I  talked  to  her  glibly  of 
the  Little  Sisters  of  the  Poor,  how  kind  they  were,  how  much 
more  comfortable  they  would  make  her  than  she  could  be  alone. 
She  told  me  she  knew, — that  Father  Daley  had  told  her  the  same 
and  that  if  she  lived  until  Spring  she  thought  she  would  go  to 
them,  but  she  said  “Oh  I  hope  God  will  let  me  die  before  the 
winter  is  over”. 

Mr.  Springer  was  rich  and  lived  simply  some  people  thought 
he  was  a  miser.  Has  name  was  conspicuously  absent  from  charity 
lists.  When  he  built  a  magnificent  Music  Hall  and  gave  it  to  the 
city  many  of  the  people  who  praised  him  qualified  their  admira¬ 
tion  by  thinking  that  he  was  striving  for  glory.  Only  a  host  of 
poor  people  and  a  very  few  of  those  who  were  helping  them,  (for 
his  poor  were  not  of  the  pauper  kind,  they  were  not  asking  for 
charity)  knew  of  the  man’s  great  heart. 

As  time  went  on  some  of  the  district  committees  as  well  as 
the  agents  began  to  ask  advice  and  even  direction.  Fortunately 
for  me  I  had  read  all  the  literature  of  organized  charity  that 
was  then  available  and  altho  I  did  not  know  much  those  who 
asked  for  advice  knew  even  less.  Then  I  attended  the  National 
Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction  and  learned  much  about 
my  profession  there. 

My  first  attendance  on  the  Conference  was  one  of  the  turning 
points  in  my  life.  I  was  barely  recovering  from  my  nervous 
break-down  and  was  still  dispirited  and  discouraged.  I  found 
wonderful  help  and  stimulus  from  contact  with  others;  some 
struggling  along  much  as  I  was,  some  with  riper  experience 
nearer  to  success.  On  matters  which  perplexed  me  I  usually 
found  advice  and  information  but  always  sympathy.  I  no  longer 
felt  alone.  I  had  discovered  splendid  comrades.  My  spirits  rose 
from  day  to  day  and  I  went  home  like  a  new  man.  From  that 
day  I  have  known  the  comradeship  of  social  welfare  work;  what 
a  splendid  fellowship  I  joined  when  I  became  a  social  worker. 
I  then  began  to  know  that  it  is  indeed  a  profession  worthy  of 
the  best  that  is  in  any  man  in  the  very  best  man. 

Coming  back  to  work  after  the  stimulus  received  and  with  the 
knowledge  gained  at  the  Conference,  life  looked  brighter  and  more 
hopeful.  We  got  a  new  President  in  Mr.  Peter  Rudolph  Neff,  a 


Fresh-Air  for  Children 


37 


wealthy  and  public  spirited  gentleman  who  had  long  been  a 
volunteer  ward-agent  of  the  old  Relief  Union,  which  had  dropped 
its  attitude  of  hostility  altho  owing  to  its  peculiar  organization 
it  could  never  co-operate.  We  thought  it  a  great  gain  to  secure 
him. 


Fresh-Air  for  Children 

In  the  summer  of  1884  a  Fresh  Air  Fund  for  children  was 
begun  and  nothing  I  have  ever  done  in  social  work  bore  so  much 
fruit  of  joy  and  had  so  little  worry  or  annoyance  connected  with 
it  as  this.  A  useful  feature  of  the  A.  C.  was  a  semi-monthly 
assembly  which  began  in  May  1884.  Its  purpose  was  to  bring 
social  workers  especially  the  volunteers  together  and  to  gain 
good  publicity  for  the  society  and  its  work.  At  the  first  meeting 
in  June,  Mrs.  Brown,  wife  of  the  president  of  the  Wesleyan 
Female  College,  read  a  paper  on  the  fresh-air-work  for  children 
in  Pittsburgh.  This  excited  so  much  interest  that  a  committee 
was  formed  on  the  spot  to  work  under  the  A.  C.  and  begin  a 
similar  enterprise  in  Cincinnati. 

Announcement  of  the  committee  brought  in  offers  of  help  and 
in  ten  days  about  $75  was  on  hand.  The  committee  elected  John 
L.  Stettinius  chairman  and  myself  secretary.  Various  schemes 
for  raising  money  were  mooted  I  remaining  silent.  Then  the 
chairman  said  “Mr.  Johnson  you  have  said  nothing,  have  you  no 
plan?”  to  which  I  replied  “the  way  to  get  money  is  to  do  some¬ 
thing  and  let  people  know  about  it”.  To  the  remark  “you  can’t 
do  much  with  $75.00”,  I  answered  “we  can  do  $75.00  worth”.  I 
then  sketched  a  possible  plan.  To  go  up  the  river  to  Clermont 
County  to  the  home  of  a  farmer  friend,  borrow  his  buggy  and 
drive  round  to  the  neighboring  farms  and  try  to  secure  boarding 
places  each  for  two  children  or  a  mother  and  babe,  to  get  free 
places  if  possible  if  not  for  small  board.  The  plan  was  adopted 
and  during  one  day’s  drive  with  my  friend  who  knew  everybody 
and  was  very  popular,  fifteen  places  were  secured  about  half  of 
which  were  free,  so  that  the  small  fund  on  hand  was  enough 
except  for  transportation,  to  provide  a  two  weeks  outing  for 
thirty  children.  Then  the  R.  R.  was  asked  for  free  transportation 
and  the  society’s  agents  were  enlisted  to  recruit  the  children  and 
mothers. 


38 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


Before  this  was  done  Parker  Donaldson,  my  farmer  friend, 
had  found  three  more  free  places  each  for  two  guests,  so  that 
we  could  place  thirty-six  in  all.  Just  a  week  later  the  Little 
Miami  R.  R.  put  a  special  car  at  our  disposal  and  with  myself 
in  charge  twenty-eight  children  in  pairs  of  two  girls  or  two  boys 
and  four  mothers  each  with  a  baby  started.  The  story  had  been 
given  the  newspapers  and  the  Commercial  Gazette  sent  one  of 
its  reporters,  dear  old  Jimmy  O’Brien,  whom  we  used  to  call 
“the  elderly  cherub  in  spectacles”,  to  see  the  fun  and  write  it  up. 

At  Batavia  Junction  we  changed  to  the  narrow  gauge  and 
Jimmy  went  back  to  the  city  promising  to  come  to  the  office  in 
the  afternoon  for  the  rest  of  the  story.  At  a  station  three  miles 
south  of  New  Richmond  we  dropped  off  two  pairs  of  children 
into  kindly  waiting  hands.  At  the  terminus  the  local  paper  had 
told  the  story  and  the  whole  town  turned  out  to  see  something 
new.  The  farmers  were  there  for  their  guests  and  everything 
went  without  a  hitch. 

Tired  but  happy  I  went  back  on  the  next  train  to  the  office 
and  presently  Jimmy  came  in.  But  he  tho  the  best  fellow  in  the 
world,  would  look  on  the  wine  when  it  is  red  and  it  was  evident 
he  was  in  no  shape  to  do  the  story  justice  so  I  said  to  him  “old 
boy,  go  home  to  bed,  I’ll  write  your  feature  for  you  and  give  it 
to  Mr.  Green  (the  city  editor)  before  eight  o’clock”. 

So  the  story  was  written,  about  a  good  half  column.  It 
described  the  bustle  at  the  station;  the  anemic  but  excited  boys 
and  girls;  the  fagged-out  mothers  with  puny  babies;  the  fat 
perspiring  man  with  his  collar  wilted  down,  in  charge ;  the  sights 
of  the  river  and  the  hills  from  the  car  windows;  the  wonder  of 
the  first  big  herd  of  cows.  Then  the  change  at  the  junction  with 
the  job  of  herding  the  crowd  now  getting  to  a  fine  pitch  of  excite¬ 
ment  ;  the  arrival  at  New  Richmond  with  the  street  full  of  people, 
dogs  and  wagons;  the  jolly  good-natured  farmers  with  their 
hearty  welcome,  the  very  heartiest  from  those  who  were  giving 
free  quarters;*  all  that  and  more;  and  then  the  announcement 
that  the  show  would  be  repeated  as  fast  as  the  money  came  in, 

♦One  of  these,  on  a  subsequent  visit,  told  me,  with  tears  in  his  eyes, 
how  the  two  little  girls  he  took  home,  when  taken  to  the  garden  with  its 
neat  lawn,  asked,  “Please,  sir,  may  we  walk  on  the  grass?”  and  how  he  had 
said,  “God  bless  you,  you  may  walk  wherever  you  like”. 


Fresh-Atr  for  Children 


39 


“please  leave  your  contribution  at  Robert  Clarke  and  Co.’s  book 
store  on  Fourth  St.” 

And  the  money  came  in  thick  and  fast.  From  the  day  of  that 
issue  of  the  paper  we  had  just  as  much  money  as  we  could  wisely 
use.  Mrs.  George  F.  Ireland,  a  member  of  the  committee,  under¬ 
took  publicity  and  the  papers  morning  and  evening  had  each  a 
human  interest  story  of  the  fresh  air  fund  in  every  edition. 

As  good  Mr.  Stettinius  said,  it  was  a  “sentimental  charity”; 
and  as  such  it  was  easy  to  get  money,  a  little  harder  to  get 
places,  and  hardest  to  find  the  children.  But  we  found  them, 
plenty  of  them,  just  the  right  kind.  Every  district  agent  went 
into  it  enthusiastically;  it  brought  some  of  them  into  sympathy 
with  the  central  work  who  had  been  rather  cool  before.  The  best 
approach  to  friendship  is  working  heartily  together  at  something 
you  like  to  do. 

Everybody  wanted  to  help.  Sunday  schools  gave  picnics  for 
the  fresh  air  fund.  Little  boys  and  girls  on  Mt.  Auburn  and 
Walnut  Hills,  ran  lemonade  stands  in  front  of  their  fathers’ 
palatial  abodes;  entertainments;  Sunday  school  collections;  ice¬ 
cream  socials;  and  the  constant  stream  of  people  with  a  dollar 
or  a  dime,  or  sometimes  a  ten  dollar  bill  dropping  into  the  book¬ 
store  made  money  the  least  of  our  troubles. 

Every  paper  published  a  daily  list  of  subscriptions  and  near 
the  end  of  the  season  came  one  that  took  your  breath  away,  a 
“Friend  of  Children,  $250.00!!”  That  seemed  a  stupendous  sum 
in  1884.  It’s  easier  now  to  raise  $10,000  for  any  good  cause  than 
it  was  then  to  scrape  $1,000  together.  People  had  not  learned  to 
give  as  they  have  learned  lately. 

The  man  who  gave  the  big  sum  attached  a  condition  and 
made  a  suggestion;  that  his  name  must  not  be  known  and  that 
we  give  a  boat  excursion  for  old  people  and  young.  So  one  of 
the  last  events  of  the  season  was  a  free  excursion  to  Coney  Island 
ten  miles  up  the  river  on  a  big  steamboat.  “Admission  free,  by 
ticket  only,  everybody  bring  your  own  lunch,  unlimited  lemonade 
without  price.”  The  boat  was  full  to  the  legal  limit  of  1200 
and  on  the  whole  it  was  a  good  time. 

An  interesting  sequel  to  the  big  gift  came  the  next  season. 
Early  in  the  year  the  liberal  giver  sent  a  check  for  $100  which 


40 


Tiir  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


filtho  still  the  largest  single  subscription  was  just  a  little  disap¬ 
pointing.  But  about  the  end  of  July  when  the  work  was  in  full 
swing  and  the  stream  of  money  was  slowing  down,  came  a  letter 
from  the  Friend  of  Children.  It  read  “Dear  Mr.  Johnson:  Last 
night  our  baby  was  sick  and  I  had  to  walk  the  floor  with  him 
for  an  hour  or  more,  and  I  thought  if  one  little  sick  baby  can 
make  so  much  trouble  in  our  home  on  this  airy  hill,  where  we 
have  everything  for  comfort  that  money  can  buy,  what  must  it  be 
like  in  the  crowded  dwellings  of  the  poor  in  the  tenements  and  T 
felt  ashamed  that  I  had  not  sent  my  usual  check.  Enclosed 
please  find  the  balance  I  owe”,  with  a  check  for  $150.  This  gentle¬ 
man  was  one  of  the  same  type  as  Keuben  Springer.  His  name 
never  appeared  on  subscription  lists  for  charity  but  he  was  lav¬ 
ishly  benevolent  in  a  quiet  way. 

In  1885  the  fresh-air-work  began  early  in  the  season.  A  few 
miles  north  of  the  city  at  Mount  Healthy  there  was  a  splendid 
location  and  because  the  district  could  be  nearly  reached  by 
street  car,  the  work  was  grouped  there  within  a  circuit  of  a  few 
miles.  Some  farms  took  four  or  six  children  at  a  time.  One 
whole  family  the  father  with  lead  poisoning  the  mother  worn 
out  with  five  children  under  eight,  were  boarded  for  a  month  and 
the  plentiful  milk  and  good  air  restored  the  father  to  health  and 
made  the  children  over  into  new  creatures. 

Wednesday  of  each  week  a  party  went  and  one  returned  and 
each  Wednesday  afternoon  the  publicity  lady  and  I  drove  from 
farm  to  farm  to  pay  the  bills  and  see  that  all  was  well  and  every¬ 
body  happy.  The  committee  met  on  Tuesday  evenings.  After  a 
late  session  Mrs.  Ireland  passing  a  tenement  house  on  her  way 
home  saw  a  girl  of  ten  sitting  on  the  door  step  holding  a  little  boy 
in  her  lap.  This  was  about  eleven  o’clock.  She  asked  the  child 
why  she  sat  there  so  late.  The  girl  told  her  that  it  was  so  hot 
up  stairs  that  mother  had  told  her  to  take  baby  to  the  door  for 
air;  he  was  three  years  old  and  used  to  walk  but  he  was  so  frail 
and  anemic  that  he  had  not  walked  for  months.  Mrs.  Ireland 
saw  a  splendid  case  for  fresh  air  and  went  up  to  the  mother;  pro¬ 
posing  that  she  and  the  boy  should  have  a  week  or  two  in  the 
country.  But  the  mother  refused ;  she  had  never  asked  for  charity 
and  would  rather  die  than  accept  it;  all  the  arguments  that  this 


Fresh-Air  for  Children 


41 


was  not  charity  it  was  just  the  fresh  air  fund,  availed  nothing.* 
Then  at  12  o’clock  the  father  who  was  a  night-watchman  at  a 
neighboring  factory  came  in  for  his  midnight  meal  and  the  argu¬ 
ment  was  renewed.  At  last  Mrs.  Ireland  prevailed. 

We  had  a  choice  place  waiting  for  a  specially  good  case,  an 
old  couple  on  a  tiny  farm  but  with  a  lovely  little  house,  lawn 
and  garden  and  to  Mrs.  Evans’  home  the  mother  and  baby  went 
the  next  day.  Two  weeks  later  on  our  inspection  trip  as  we  drove 
up  to  the  Evans  cottage,  we  saw  the  mother  in  a  garden  chair 
and  the  little  fellow  who  had  not  walked  for  months  chasing 
butterflies  on  the  lawn.  Two  weeks  of  abundant  milk  and  con¬ 
stant  pure  fresh  air  had  worked  the  miracle.  And  good  old  Mrs. 
Evans  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  begged  that  the  dear  mother  and 
baby  might  stay  another  week  as  her  guests  without  pay. 

About  the  middle  of  the  season  Mr.  Waldo  Brown  of  Oxford, 
Butler  Co.,  a  seedsman  and  farm  supply  agent,  offered  to  arrange 
for  free  places  among  his  customers  and  a  group  of  twenty  chil¬ 
dren  were  sent.  He  met  the  train  with  a  party  wagon  decorated 
with  flags,  drove  them  all  around  town  so  that  folks  could  see 
the  fun  and  be  induced  to  chip  in  and  then  took  them  out  to 
the  farms.  He  engineered  several  other  parties  and  collected  a 
nice  little  sum  to  help  pay  expenses ;  and  for  years  thereafter  the 
good  folks  of  Butler  Co.  continued  their  interest  in  the  children 
of  the  smoky  city. 

In  the  latter  part  of  August  I  was  invited  to  lunch  by  a  very 
wealthy  man  who  wanted  to  know  about  this  lovely  new  charity. 
When  the  story  was  told  the  host  said,  “How  are  you  off  for 
money?”  the  answer  was  “Thank  you  Mr.  Emery  (for  it  was  L.  S. 
Emery)  we  have  all  we  can  use  for  this  season;  but  if  you  would 
like  to  subscribe  we  will  take  care  of  your  gift  until,  next  year”. 
His  answer  came  “no,  no,  let  each  year  care  for  itself”.  He  after¬ 
wards  told  a  friend  who  of  course  repeated  it;  “that  man  Johnson 
is  the  only  charity  worker  I  have  ever  met  who  does  not  try  to 
hog  anything  in  sight.” 

♦This  pathetic,  sometimes  desperate,  hatred  and  fear  of  “charity”  by 
the  decent  poor  has  a  deep-seated  cause  in  human  nature.  The  same 
people  will  freely  give  and  take  help  to  or  from  a  neighbor  equally  poor 
with  themselves.  It  is  one  of  those  facts  that  needs  most  careful  con¬ 
sideration  by  would-be  benefactors.  He  who  overcomes  this  feeling  by 
his  administration  of  alms  may  be  doing  a  fatal  spiritual  injury  to  the 
recipient. 


42 


The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 


That  lunch  and  conversation  was  an  important  event  for  the 
fresh  air  fund.  The  following  year  Mr.  Emery  gave  the  use  of  a 
beautiful  country  house  a  few  miles  up  the  river  with  money 
enough  to  run  it  all  season  for  twenty  guests;  the  next  year  he 
deeded  the  house  and  twenty  acres  of  lawn  and  garden  and 
thereafter  liberally  supported  it. 

Several  other  special  features  were  tried;  one  was  single-day 
outings  by  street  cars  to  a  house  with  a  big  garden  on  the  out¬ 
skirts,  for  mothers  and  children  who  could  not  leave  home  over¬ 
night.  It  was  a  busy  and  satisfying  summer. 

When  the  outings  were  over  at  the  last  of  September,  the  end 
of  the  second  year’s  work ;  the  committee  detached  itself  from  the 
leading  strings  of  the  Associated  Charities  and  became  “The 
Fresh  Air  and  Convalescent’s  Aid  Society”.  My  policy  with  this 
work  as  with  some  other  I  organized,  was  to  encourage  an  inde¬ 
pendent  existence  as  soon  as  feasible  but  to  keep  it  in  close  co¬ 
operation  with  the  parent  society.  A  district  agent  whom  I  had 
trained  became  secretary  and  manager,  living  at  the  country 
house  which  Mr.  Emery  had  given  us.  The  society,  in  1922,  is 
still  a  prosperous  going  concern. 

Other  Welfare  Plans 

Early  in  1885  a  legacy  of  $1,000  enabled  us  to  begin  a  wood 
yard,  used  partly  to  relieve  vagrants  and  partly  as  a  labor  test 
for  certain  residents.  It  would  be  more  correct  to  say  the  wood 
yard  was  to  relieve  citizens  from  the  importunity  of  vagrants. 
It  is  hard  at  best  for  the  well  fed  benevolent  man,  even  tho  he 
knows  that  begging  is  hurtful  to  the  beggar,  to  refuse  alms  to  a 
poor  devil  who  pleads  hunger.  When  there  is  some  machinery 
available  that  offers  to  help  such  cases  and  at  least  tries  to  do  it 
without  injuring  them,  the  benevolent  heart  comes  more  under  the 
control  of  the  thoughtful  instructed  head. 

Gradually  the  district  work  was  improved  and  unified  and 
some  co-operation  was  established.  The  City  poor  commissioners 
agreed  to  list  all  their  cases  with  the  A.  C.  confidential  register. 
Cordial  relations  were  made  with  the  Humane  Society  in  its 
children’s  work;  its  agents  learning  to  use  our  register  before 
beginning  the  investigation  of  a  case  of  alleged  child-neglect; 
and  we  co-operated  with  that  society  in  a  successful  movement  to 


Other  Welfare  Plans 


43 


clear  the  streets  of  little  “news-girls” ;  assisting  in  the  investi¬ 
gations  and  helping  to  provide  for  those  who  alleged  family  pov¬ 
erty  as  the  reason  for  their  work  which  had  led  to  shocking 
immorality.  The  Jewish  Benevolent  Society  came  into  close  co¬ 
operation,  using  our  woodyard  as  a  labor  test  with  some  of  their 
worst-spoiled  cases.  A  few  of  the  Church  aid  societies  asked  our 
assistance  in  investigation  and  case  work. 

A  wealthy  and  very  benevolent  man  for  whom  one  of  the 
districts  with  my  guidance  had  handled  a  long  standing  and 
difficult  relief  case,  called  on  me  to  express  his  thanks.  He  told 
me  that  the  society  now  met  all  his  needs  except  in  one  particu¬ 
lar  and  that  was  with  regard  to  applicants  who  came  to  his  door 
late  in  the  evening.  He  said  he  knew  that  his  duty  was  to  visit 
their  homes  to  make  sure  of  facts  before  giving  aid,  but  his  health 
was  not  good  and  in  inclement  weather,  the  kind  often  chosen  by 
skilful  professional  beggars,  he  could  not  safely  leave  his  home 
at  night  so  that  he  was  obliged  to  give  in  ignorance.  He  said  if 
only  some  plan  could  be  devised  to  meet  such  cases  he  could  wish 
no  better  assistance  than  our  society  was  giving  him  in  his 
benevolent  work.  The  next  day  I  began  keeping  evening  office 
hours  and  also  a  Sunday  afternoon  hour  to  accommodate  the 
ministers  who  are  often  assailed  at  the  close  of  their  morning 
service.  Of  course  the  cases  were  few,  not  enough  to  justify  the 
time  spent  if  the  purpose  of  the  society  were  simply  relief  of  the 
poor.  But  from  the  other  important  side,  the  relief  of  the  benevo¬ 
lent  and  also  conscientious  rich,  I  felt  it  was  well  worth  doing. 
You  cannot  tell  people  to  refuse  to  encourage  beggary  unless  you 
offer  them  a  proper  alternative  when  their  sympathies  are 
appealed  to.  There  is  always  the  possible  one  worthy  sufferer 
among  the  one  hundred  impostors  and  so  that  the  genuine  needy 
may  not  be  refused  the  others  are  encouraged  in  their  impositions. 

In  Cincinnati  in  summer  coal  is  cheap  and  in  winter  it  is 
dear.  Many  people  arrange  in  summer  for  their  winter  supply, 
sometimes  laying  it  in  at  once,  sometimes  contracting  for  future 
delivery.  One  of  our  Provident  Plans  was  a  fuel  saving  society 
with  a  subscription  of  ten  cents  or  more  per  week.  We  made  a 
contract  with  a  big  coal  firm  at  summer  prices  for  winter  delivery 
and  so  gave  many  poor  but  thrifty  people  an  equal  chance  with 
the  wealthy  to  buy  their  coal  cheaply.  Several  scores  of  poor 


44  The  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati 

families  who  had  usually  bought  their  coal  by  the  bushel  sub¬ 
scribed  to  our  fuel  society  and  bought  by  the  ton. 

It  is  a  distinct  advantage  to  a  general  secretary  in  his  rela¬ 
tions  with  his  board  when  he  receives  recognition  by  some  big 
National  agency,  and  the  fact  that  I  had  been  made  chairman  of 
an  important  committee  of  the  National  Conference  was  quite 
an  asset  to  me  in  Cincinnati.  So  the  executive  committee  sent 
me  to  Washington  to  attend  the  twelfth  Conference  in  July  1885. 

I  returned  from  the  Conference  once  more  with  renewed  hope 
and  enthusiasm  full  of  plans  for  bettering  our  work,  plans  in 
which  a  steadily  growing  number  of  the  district  agents  and  com¬ 
mittees  showed  interest  and  even  confidence.  Then  under  Mr. 
Neff’s  direction  a  campaign  for  funds  was  conducted  in  the  hope 
of  establishing  a  firm  financial  basis  for  the  central  work.  The 
central  committee  needed  about  $3500  per  annum  and  it  was 
proposed  to  raise  this  sum  in  $5.00  memberships.  But  unfortu¬ 
nately  most  of  the  people  who  would  have  been  likely  to  subscribe 
were  already,  members  of  the  districts  and  the  campaign  was  a 
sad  failure.  It  seemed  impossible  to  secure  adequate  support. 
The  effects  of  the  earlier  insistence  that  the  Associated  Charities 
was  to  bring  about  a  great  saving  of  money;  seemed  to  cling  to 
it  especially  to  its  directors.  Members  of  the  board  some  of 
them  wealthy  men  who  should  have  given  handsomely  took  a  $5.00 
membership. 

Then  came  a  loud  call  from  the  Chicago  C.  O.  S.  which  had 
just  made  an  heroic  fight  for  its  existence.  With  much  regret 
on  my  part  and  much  seeming  reluctance  on  the  part  of  the 
executive  committee,  my  resignation  was  given  and  accepted  in 
March  1886,  after  two  and  a  quarter  years  of  work,  which  was 
my  apprenticeship  as  a  social  worker. 

Cincinnati  in  the  eighties  affords  as  good  an  illustration  as 
any  city  in  the  middle  West  of  the  setting  in  which  American 
social  work  as  we  now  know  it  began.  Its  present  fine  develop¬ 
ment  with  its  Federation  of  Social  Agencies,  its  million  dollar 
funds,  its  Social  Unit  experiments  and  its  highly  organized  Asso¬ 
ciated  Charities,  shows  a  marvelous  contrast  with  those  earlv 
beginnings.  Still  crude  as  our  early  work  was  we  did  sow  some 
good  seed  and  present  conditions  are.  at  least  in  some  small  part, 
the  fruit  of  it. 


Chapter  Two* 


FAMILY  WELFARE  WORKf  IN  THE  MIDDLE  WEST  IN 
THE  LATE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

I  wish  it  were  possible  to  picture  in  words  the  fine  enthusiasm 
of  the  Associated  Charities  and  Charity  Organization  Society 
people  of  the  eighteen-eighties.  We  were  so  full  of  hope  for 
humanity  thru  our  efforts,  so  confident  of  our  new  gospel  of 
benevolence.  It  seemed  not  a  ray  but  a  whole  flood  of  light 
on  the  dreary  prospect  of  human  misery.  We  felt  that  our  work 

of  all  that  could  be  done  was  the  most  hopeful. 

Our  objective  was  the  place  where  most  troubles  begin  the 
family  life ;  which  when  normal  is  the  source  of  most  social  well 
being:  when  broken  or  diseased  is  the  origin  of  most  social  ills. 
We  did  not  have  the  phrase  “family  welfare  work”  but  that  was 
what  we  had  in  mind  to  do.  We  had  never  heard  of  “Social 
Diagnosis”  but  we  tried  to  diagnose.  When  we  talked  of  investi¬ 
gation,  registration,  co-operation  and  visitation,  those  dry  terms 


♦This  chapter  is  written  frankly  for  social  workers  and  particularly 
for  those  whose  business  is  family  welfare  work.  It  has  been  submitted 
for  criticism  to  two  experts.  One,  the  editor  of  a  social  magazine,  declares 
its  matter  is  obsolescent:  that  the  struggles  it  tells  of  are  ancient  history; 
that  every  intelligent  person  knows  poverty  is  not  to  be  conquered  by 
charity  but  by  many  other  things,  even  by  the  coming  in  of  a  better  social 
order;  that  the  chapter  detracts  from  the  value  and  interest  of  the  book. 
The  other,  the  head  of  a  great  charitable  organization  who  has  had  a  wide 
experience  in  several  forms  of  social  work,  says  it  is  almost  if  not  quite 
as  timely  today  as  it  was  forty  years  ago ;  that  he  is  now  meeting  situa¬ 
tions  very  much  like  some  of  those  described  and,  while  he  does  not  agree 
with  all  of  my  conclusions,  he  still  thinks  it  the  most  valuable  of  the  three 
chapters  on  organized  charity ;  and  by  all  means  should  go  in. 

As  it  is  written  more  intensely  from  conviction  than  any  other  chapter 
in  my  book,  except  some  of  those  about  the  feeble-minded,  I  must  print 
it  with  all  its  foot-notes  and  advise  readers  who  think  an  analysis  of  the 
causes  of  things  which  happened  forty  years  ago  and  the  lessons  to  he 
learned  therefrom  will  not  interest  them,  to  skip  a  few  pages. 

fl  want  to  forestall  criticism  by  confessing  that  I  am  using  recent 
terminology  (and  even  present-day  slang  sometimes),  giving  modern  names 
to  things  that  existed  before  the  new  terms  were  invented. 


(45) 


40 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


at  least  to  some  of  us,  had  life  and  we  used  to  make  strenuous 
sometimes  pathetic  efforts  to  get  them  across  to  our  scanty 
audiences  at  an  occasional  charity  meeting  and  to  make  our 
hearers  feel  about  them  as  we  did. 

We  had  neither  the  technique  of  the  art  nor  the  many  luminous 
terms  of  the  science  which  have  evolved  since  that  day  and  we 
had  to  use  other  words,  less  lucid  and  less  accurate,  because  they 
were  all  we  had.  Some  of  us  tried  for  years  (Frederic  Almy  and 
I,  I  think,  a  little  harder  than  any  one  else)  to  restore  the  poor, 
old,  ill-used  word  “charity”  to  its  pristine  meaning;  we  needed 
it  so  badly  and  we  only  gave  up  the  effort  after  years  of  failure.* 

To  us  organizing  or  associating  the  “charities”  meant  getting 
other  people  to  believe  as  we  did  and  to  work  with  us  for  the 
welfare  of  the  less  fortunate.  Our  chief  resentment  against  the 
old  relief  agencies  was  because  we  thought  they  palliated  often 
with  niggardly,  inadequate  dolesf,  evils  we  wanted  to  remove 
and  would  not  help  us  to  remove  them;  that  they  were  making 
possible  the  continuance  of  unwholesome  conditions.  No  wonder 
when  we  found  as  we  often  did  in  those  days  people  working  at 
starvation  pay,  only  able  to  live  because  of  “charity”;  that  we 
criticized  the  kind-hearted,  soft-headed  relief  agent.  To  us  he 
was  ignorantly  conspiring  with  some  grasping  exploiter  of  labor. 

This  was  all  long  before  the  scientific  studies  of  standards  of 
living  which  have  thrown  much  light  on  the  problems  of  labor 

__ ___ _____ ______ ______ _  n  |  rp 

♦The  study  of  the  depreciation  of  verbal  currency  is  a  very  interesting 
one,  all  the  more  that  it  is  not  intentional ;  as  was  the  debasement  of  the 
French  currency  when  the  King  found  he  could  increase  his  treasury 
balance  by  recoining  the  money  with  a  liberal  alloy  of  base  metal :  and  it 
seems  as  tho  the  terms  of  social  welfare  work  are  peculiarly  liable  to 
depreciation.  Could  there  be  a  more  pathetic  fate  for  a  noor  word  than 
has  befallen  “charity”?  Think  what  it  means  in  the  13th  Chapter  of 
Corinthians  and  what  it  means  today. 

fA  curious  instance  of  the  results  of  dole  relief  which  are  possible 
comes  from  London.  There  is,  or  was,  a  street  of  tenement  houses  which 
is  the  line  between  two  parishes,  each  but  for  this  street  full  of  business 
or  factory  buildings.  From  the  church  in  the  parish  on  one  side  of  the 
street,  a  dole  was  distributed  on  Easter  Sunday  to  poor  residents  of  the 
parish.  With  rising  property  values  the  fund  had  increased  and  the  num¬ 
ber  of  poor  residents  decreased,  the  amount  of  each  dole  increasing  in 
proportion.  The  rents  on  that  side  of  the  street  for  identical  tenements 
were  more  than  double  those  on  the  other :  the  property  owners  were  the 
sole  beneficiaries  of  the  dole.  Instances  of  the  kind  miflrht  bo  multiplied 
ad  lib.  It  is  rare  indeed  that  any  dole  system,  which  has  persisted  over  a 
long  term  of  years,  is  doing  anything  the  least  like  its  original  purpose, 
or  is  not  doing  serious  harm. 


Conflicting  Agencies 


47 


and  charity  and  which  are  destined  to  help  in  bringing  about  the 
economic  readjustments  which  are  surely  coming.  I  must  con¬ 
fess  that  we  hardly  dared  say  in  public  what  we  thought  in  pri¬ 
vate  about  such  things  because  the  exploiters  or  their  friends, 
at  any  rate  people  of  their  “class”,  were  our  supporters.  I  think 
the  first  time  any  charity-man  said  “out  in  meeting”  that  low 
wages  are  among  the  chief  causes  of  poverty  was  in  1903  at  the 
National  Conference,!  in  Atlanta,  when  Edmond  Butler  of  New 
York  gave  not  only  the  dole  dispensers  but  us  who  thought  our¬ 
selves  much  better,  one  of  the  most  wholesome  rebukes  we  ever 
had,  declaring  that  not  only  palliating  relief  but  much  of  our 
other  treatment  was  aiding  the  exploiters  of  labor. 

In  1882  we  were  sure  that  if  we  could  only  thoroly  “organize 
the  charities”;  if  we  could  only  induce  them  all  to  accept  our 
philosophy  and  co-operate  heartily,  the  millenium  would  surely 
be  due  by  the  next  express.  When  we  met  at  the  National  Con¬ 
ference  we  grudged  the  time  devoted  to  prisons  and  reformatories 
and  hospitals  for  insane  and  outdoor  relief,  and  orphan  asylums 
and  other  political  and  perfunctory  schemes;  all  these  were 
dealing  with  the  consequences  of  what  we  intended  to  prevent. 
We  wanted  to  save  or  restore  the  homes,  which  when  broken  and 
spoiled  filled  the  orphan  asylums  and  reform  schools  and  later 
the  prisons;  to  obviate  the  need  of  outdoor  relief;  to  improve 
living  conditions  so  that  there  should  be  less  insanity  and  far 
less  sickness.  If  only  the  Associated  Charities  work  were  once 
completely  done  and  the  breakage  prevented  all  these  repair 
shops  would  soon  be  needless.  Why  waste  time  on  such  ephem¬ 
eral,  such  transitory  affairs?* 

The  Conflicting  Agencies 

Looking  backward  over  the  years  since  I  became  a  friendly 
visitor  and  district  director  of  the  A.  C.  of  Cincinnati  many 

fThe  National  Conference  of  Social  Work  then  called  of  “Charities  and 
Correction”  I  shall  use  the  abbreviation  thruout. 

♦Lest  I  should  be  accused  of  using  a  figure  of  speech  as  tho  it  expressed 
a  fact,  I  wish  to  declare  that  the  above  is  a  faithful  statement  of  the  atti¬ 
tude  of  mind  of  a  group  of  social  workers  at  the  National  Conference  of 
1886 ;  that  I  fully  shared  the  mental  attitude  and  expressed  it  on  one 
occasion  to  the  amusement  of  some  of  the  elder  statesmen,  one  of  whom 
said  that  it  was  just  this  belief  by  each  group  in  the  paramount  importance 
of  its  own  specialty  that  made  the  Conference  so  intensely  interesting. 


48 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


things  which  then  seemed  inexplicable  are  now  clear  enough. 
It  was  hard  then  to  understand  why  our  radiant  theories  were 
not  universally  accepted,  why  the  old  relief  societies  instead  of 
slamming  us  right  and  left  did  not  take  us  to  their  bosoms  with 
joy,  or  come  eagerly  into  close  co-operation  under  our  banner. 
The  fact  was  that  because  our  beautiful  schemes  of  organized 
benevolence  were  new  to  us  we  imagined  they  had  just  been  dis¬ 
covered.  No  one  among  us  seemed  to  know  that  the  sort  of 
thing  we  called  “scientific  organized  charity’7  (how  we  revelled 
in  “scientific”) ,  was  not  invented  in  1868  when  its  new  name  was 
coined;  that  it  dated  from  Hamburgh  in  1788  and,  with  various 
modifications  and  under  different  names,  had  had  its  rise,  culmi¬ 
nation  and  decline  several  times  since  Casper  Von  Voght  and 
Professor  Busch  made  over  the  Hamburgh  Patriotic  Society  into 
what  was  really  the  first  C.  O.  S. :  each  new  attempt  beginning 
with  more  scientific  method  than  the  one  it  followed,  each  rising 
a  little  higher  and  lasting  a  little  longer  on  the  highest  level 
gained  and  yet  all  essentially  the  same. 

The  protagonist  of  charity  organization  in  America,  the  Rev. 
S.  H.  Gurteen  of  Buffalo,  did  indeed  in  his  lectures  go  back  as 
far  as  1853  and  call  it  the  “Elberfeld  system”.  But  somehow 
neither  he  nor  the  rest  of  us  grasped  the  thought  that  the 
A.  I.  C.  P.’s*  and  Provident  Associations  which  began  in  the 
U.  S.  in  the  forties  had  been  inspired  by  the  same  ideas  were 
responsive  to  waves  of  charitable  emotion  from  the  same  sources 
and  were  founded  on  the  very  same  principles  which  we  thought 
were  all  new  with  us.  We  could  not  understand  when  they 
opposed  us  as  mischievous  upstarts  and  said  that  we  were  merely 
talking  about  and  promising  to  do  under  a  new  name  what  they 
had  long  been  doing,  that  they  were  justified;  at  least  to  the 
extent  that  our  alleged  new  gospel  altho  it  had  some  few  original 
features  was  on  the  whole  only  new  to  us.  It  had  been  new  to 
them  forty  years  earlier  and  they  still  thought  themselves  true 
believers;  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  only  remaining  evidences 
of  their  faith  were  in  print  on  an  occasional  page  of  their  annual 
report.  There  they  gravely  stated  the  theories  of  investigation, 

♦Association  for  the  Improvement  of  the  Condition  of  the  Poor,  vide 
New  York,  Baltimore,  Brooklyn,  etc.  In  Pittsburgh  it  was  frankly  the 
“society  for  improving  the  poor”. 


Conflicting  Agencies 


49 


co-operation,  referring  cases  to  appropriate  sources  of  relief,  help 
by  employment,  etc.,  while  they  were  doing  nothing  but  some 
more  or  less,  chiefly  less,  efficient  almsgiving.  Nor  did  we  dream 
that  our  history  would  repeat  theirs;  that  we  should  follow  the 
same  downward  path;  and  in  thirty  years  be  resenting  our 
would-be  successors  as  they  were  resenting  us.* 

In  every  city  where  one  of  the  old  relief  societies  existed,  when 
charity  organization  was  attempted,  it  met  with  bitter  opposition ; 
not  only  from  the  officials  of  the  old  societies  but  from  many  of  the 
best  people.  The  struggles  in  New  York,  Baltimore,  Chicago, 
Cincinnati  and  some  other  cities  were  intense  and  protracted  and 
had  various  results.  In  St.  Louis  repeated  attempts  to  form  a 
Charity  Organization  Society  were  thwarted  by  the  Provident 
Association,  which  in  1884  when  I  examined  it  was  one  of  the 
least  worthy  of  its  name.  Some  truces  were  declared;  in  New 
York  the  rival  societies  came  so  close  together  as  to  conduct  a 
joint  application  bureau.  A  few  amalgamations  were  effected 
some  with  good,  others  with  disastrous  results.  When  the  old 
lion  and  the  young  lamb  lay  down  together  the  lamb  sometimes 
got  his  natural  place  inside  the  lion.f 

Most  of  the  paid  executives  of  the  old  societies  were  elderly 
men  long  past  the  age  when  new  things  come  easily.  A  worn 
out  preacher  was  thought  properly  pensioned  in  such  a  job. 
When  the  Philadelphia  C.  O.  S.  began,  a  leading  newspaper  criti¬ 
cised  it  for  paying  its  agents,  saying  that  no  one  should  be  paid 
for  charity  work  unless  he  would  otherwise  be  himself  an  object 
of  charity;  and  the  paper  voiced  a  usual  opinion.  The  A.  C. 
and  C.  O.  S.  workers  were  mostly  young,  they  were  full  of 
energy,  many  of  them  ached  for  co-operation  but  some  resented 
the  unkind  things  that  were  said  about  them  and  were  spoiling 
for  a  fight.  When  these  met  as  opponents  in  public,  as  they  did 
rarely,  the  verbal  victory  usually  seemed  to  belong  to  the  new 
people  but  such  victories  were  superficial. 

The  old  order  had  its  firm  place  in  the  community.  It  was 

*It  was  rather  pathetic  as  well  as  interesting  to  have  the  secretary  of 
the  Associated  Charities  of  a  large  Middle-Western  city,  in  1915,  complain 
to  me  that  the  new  Social  Welfare  League  was  impudently  trying  to  steal 
his  thunder. 

fMy  society  was  the  lamb  in  a  pitiful  instance  of  this  kind  in  Chicago 
in  1888. 


50 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


chiefly  supported  by  a  few  wealthy  and  therefore  conservative 
people.  The  new  conception,  or  what  we  thought  new  was  some¬ 
what  disquieting  to  them.  It  challenged  some  things  positively 
and  vaguely  many  others;  among  them  some  people  thought  the 
Scriptures  and  even  the  bases  of  social  order.  Its  Utopian  pur¬ 
pose  was  to  abolish  poverty.  A  favorite  maxim  was  “wise 
charity  exists  to  make  itself  needless”.  Now  the  benevolent 
wealthy  of  last  century  perhaps  all  unconsciously  did  not  really 
desire  to  abolish  poverty.  What’s  the  use  of  being  rich  if  there 
are  no  poor?  They  wanted  to  relieve  the  poor  in  the  most  eco¬ 
nomical  way ;  they  were  sincerely  sorry  for  them ;  but  they  were 
piously  resigned  to  the  mysterious  dispensations  of  Providence 
which  has  so  ordained  the  universe  that  there  must  be  rich  people 
and  poor  ones.  They  would  gladly  give  liberally  to  the  poor,  not 
only  their  cast-off  clothes  and  other  superfluities  but  even  to  the 
extent  of  a  little  sacrifice.  They  would  do  anything  for  the 
“lower  classes”  indeed  except  to  get  off  their  backs. 

The  old  heads  quoted  the  Bible  freely.  They  said  “the  poor 
ye  have  always  with  you”.  They  reminded  us  that  “the  poor 
shall  never  cease  out  of  the  land”.  They  were  a  little  doubtful 
about  investigation,  still  more  of  central  registration,  lest  their 
left  hands  should  know  what  their  right  hands  were  doing  and 
besides  we  are  told  to  “give  to  him  that  asketh  thee”.  The  young 
enthusiasts  did  not  admire  that  range  of  texts.  Their  favorite 
passages  mentioned  Lazarus  who  in  the  long  run  had  so  much  the 
better  of  Dives;  Job  who  searched  out  the  causes  of  trouble;  and 
the  camel  which  had  difficulty  with  the  needle’s  eye.  From  so 
vast  and  varied  a  treasury  of  wisdom  as  the  Bible  every  one 
chooses  the  gem  which  best  adorns  the  theory  he  propounds. 

Years  later  after  I  had  watched  the  fatal  process  of  the 
degradation  of  charitable  energy  taking  place  in  many  of  the 
Associated  Charities,  I  was  able  to  recognize  what  had  happened 
to  the  mid-century  organizations.*  They  had  all  begun  with  ideas 
of  preventive  as  well  as  remedial  work.  Each  new  scheme  of 
benevolent  activity  as  it  has  developed  in  its  turn  has  stressed 
the  need  of  discovering  and  averting  the  causes  of  poverty.  Now 

*See  Warner’s  American  Charities,  1st  edition,  page  376,  for  the  down¬ 
ward  trend  in  the  Associations  for  Improvement  of  the  Condition  of  the 
Poor,  and  the  Provident  Associations. 


Conflicting  Agencies 


51 


the  immediate  causes  of  poverty  are  many  and  easily  seen.  The 
remote  causes  are  inherent  in  the  present  faulty  structure  of 
society.  Every  privileged  interest,  the  existence  of  all  “male¬ 
factors  of  great  wealth”,  means  some  one  injured  some  one  made 
poor.  It  is  not  mere  accident  that  so  many  settlement  workers 
who  have  intimate  knowledge  not  of  the  pauper  but  of  those  who 
feel  themselves  held  down,  should  lean  towards  Socialism.  To 
discover  and  avert  the  social  causes  of  poverty  means  to  uncover 
and  perhaps  disturb  the  social  order.*  But  each  new  organiza¬ 
tion  in  its  turn,  inevitably  concentrated  on  almsgiving  because 
that  is  easy  while  preventive,  still  more  constructive,  family  wel¬ 
fare  work  is  difficult;  so  the  cheap  and  easy  way  was  taken  and 
gradually  in  some  cases  quickly  in  most,  almsgiving  wholly  pos¬ 
sessed  them.  They  lost  what  little  of  the  real  spirit  of  social 
work  they  began  with  and  forgot  their  early  programs.  And  of 
course  the  quality  of  their  almsgiving  deteriorated,  became 
mechanical,  official,  routine  and,  usually,  inadequate. 

Then  again  we  must  remember  that  the  clients  (as  we  call  them 
now)  were  not  aware  of  any  necessity  for  reconstruction  or 
rehabilitation;  nor  did  they  deem  it  possible  to  prevent  distress 
or  destitution.  Some  of  the  causes  of  poverty  were  subjective 
were  within  the  poor  themselves;  they  hardly  desired  to  remove 
them.  They  were  vaguely  conscious  that  the  world  had  used 
them  hardly  that  things  were  not  quite  fair.  But  what  they 
asked  for  was  relief  and  plenty  of  it  and  what  the  relief -agent 
said  to  them  of  doing  better,  or  of  being  better  people,  was  only 
accepted  so  far  as  its  acceptance  was  a  condition  of  relief.  So 
clients  and  agents  conspired  to  make  relief  the  end  of  social  effort. 

*See  the  illuminating  indictment  of  the  desire  for  gain  as  the  inciting 
cause  of  much  poverty  and  vice,  in  Devine’s  address  as  president  of  the 
National  Conference  in  the  Proceedings  of  1906.  But  all  the  poverty 
caused  by  industry  is  not  from  vice  or  spoliation.  Some  great  essential 
industries  are  organized  on  the  basis  of  the  existence  of  a  fringe  of  unem¬ 
ployed  labor,  available  when  extra  help  is  needed  from  time  to  time.  I 
have  watched  the  workers  going  in  to  a  great  packing-house  when  the 
whistle  blew  and  seen,  after  the  regulars  had  entered,  the  casuals  lining 
up  in  an  eager,  pathetic  row ;  waiting  for  the  foremen  to  pick  out  those 
they  wanted  for  that  day ;  perhaps  ten  or  twenty  from  a  hundred  or  more ; 
and  heard  the  foreman  answer  the  question  “Will  there  be  work  tomor¬ 
row?”  by  “If  you  want  to  work,  you’d  better  be  here”;  and  then  watched 
the  rejected  ones  slink  away  with  downcast  looks  and  heard  them  curse 
the  foreman  who  would  not  say  “no”,  lest  they  should  try  for  a  steady 
job  elsewhere.  And  there  are  other  factories,  with  less  excuse  than  the 
meat-packers  similarly  treating  human  labor  as  a  commodity. 


52 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


The  old  societies  recognized  the  evils  of  duplication  almost 
as  clearly  as  we  did,  but  their  remedy  was  by  what  seemed  the 
simple  way  of  Concentration,  the  less  direct  method  of  Associa¬ 
tion  did  not  occur  to  them.  They  had  no  conception  of  any 
“social  gulf7  between  rich  and  poor  so  they  not  only  made  no 
effort  to  bridge  it  but  many  of  their  methods  might  have  been 
deliberately  intended  to  widen  it.  They  said  to  the  benevolent 
wealthy  “let  us  distribute  your  gifts  for  you ;  relief  of  the  poor 
is  a  difficult  task  and  sometimes  does  harm ;  we  know  how  to  do 
it  wisely  and  you  don’t77.  They  declared  “the  less  the  rich  have 
to  do  with  the  poor  the  better77.  This  was  said  to  me  in  bitter 
earnest  by  the  general  superintendent  of  a  large  city  relief  agency 
in  1886 ;  it  fairly  expressed  the  opinion  of  many  if  not  most  such 
officials  at  that  time.  But  many  of  the  benevolent  people  did  not 
feel  that  way.  They  enjoyed  personal  “charity77  that  they  might 
have  the  meed  of  gratitude  from  the  recipients.  So  duplication 
went  on  apace. 

The  Associated  Charities  people  wanted  not  concentration 
but  co-operation  and  helpful  association.  And  we  did  perhaps 
unduly  emphasize  the  evils  of  pauperism  which  arise  out  of  mis¬ 
cellaneous  disorganized  charity.  Especially  did  we  decry  out¬ 
door  relief* ;  that  for  a  while  was  a  very  bete  noir  to  most  of  us. 
There  is  rarely  any  rational  relation  between  the  size  of  a  popu¬ 
lation  or  even  the  amount  of  poverty  and  the  volume  of  relief. 
That  seems  to  be  always  and  everywhere  a  matter  of  administra¬ 
tion.  One  of  the  strange  paradoxes  of  so-called  charity  is  that 
wherever  public  alms  is  plentiful  and  carelessly  given  there 
private  almsgiving  grows  apace.  Where  there  is  no  public  alms¬ 
giving  there  is  less  begging  than  in  cities  where  outdoor  relief 
prevails. 

A  similar  anomaly  is  seen  when  we  compare  outdoor  and 
indoor  relief.  The  casual  thinker  and  many  a  thinker  who  is  by 
no  means  casual  imagines  that  when  outdoor  relief  is  cut  off  or 
curtailed  indoor  relief ;  that  in  almshouses ;  will  inevitablv 
increase  at  some  proportionate  rate.  But  we  know  that  the  con¬ 
trary  is  the  fact.  The  two  kinds  of  relief  increase  and  diminish 

♦Outdoor  relief  is  a  strictly  technical  term  for  that  sriven  by  a  public 
official  from  public  funds  to  persons  not  in  institutions.  The  term  is  often 
used  incorrectly.  In  this  book  I  shall  use  it,  and  any  other  of  the  few 
technical  terms  we  have,  strictly. 


Service  or  Relief 


v  53 

not  as  we  might  expect  in  an  inverse  ratio  but  together;  or  at 
any  rate  without  causal  inter-relations  between  them.*  The  same 
is  true  with  regard  to  the  expected  increase  of  demand  on  private 
agencies  when  public  aid  is  diminished.  Usually  it  does  not  hap¬ 
pen.  Two  classic  instances  are  those  of  Brooklyn  in  1879  and 
Philadelphia  in  1882  and  1883;  and  many  others  might  be  cited. 
Pauperism  is  a  disease  of  the  body-politic  and  almsgiving  is  not  a 
cure  for  it  but  works  like  drugs  which  palliate  symptoms  in  the 
human  body  and  increase  the  disease  which  causes  them.  Like 
many  drugs  it  has  a  tendency  toward  increasing  doses  and  to 
create  a  habit.  Rockefeller’s  millions  (or  billions,  is  it?)  given 
to  the  poor  of  one  city  would  increase  not  diminish  pauperism. 
It  would  be  a  drastic  remedy  and  is  of  course  unthinkable  as  a 
practical  proposition ;  but  if  all  almsgiving  of  every  description 
could  be  cut  off  for  a  few  weeks  pauperism  would  be  extinct; 
if  the  paupers  survived  it  would  be  as  laborers  or  depredators. 
When  social  work  shall  reach  its  highest  development  of  pre¬ 
ventive  and  constructive  effort  alms  will  be  no  longer  needed 
and  the  relief  agent  as  such  will  become  as  obsolete  as  the  hang¬ 
man  as  extinct  as  the  familiar  of  the  Inquisition. 

Robert  Treat  Paine,  president  of  the  Boston  A.  C.  devised  the 
motto  “not  alms  but  a  friend”  and  we  used  it  as  a  text.  But  we 
were  modest ;  we  thought  others  were  doing  better  than  we. 
Sometimes  we  deplored  that  we  could  not  do  in  Chicago,  Ill.,  and 
Cincinnati.  O.  the  beautiful  work  of  the  friendly  visitor  as  it 
was  done  by  the  wiser  and  better  folk  in  Boston,  Mass.,  and 
Newport,  R.  T.  And  sometimes  the  people  of  Chicago  and  Cin¬ 
cinnati,  thought  themselves  just  as  charitable  as  and  more  prac¬ 
tical  than  those  wise  men  of  the  East  and  did  not  relish  our  com¬ 
parisons. 

Our  theory  about  relief  was  that  all  alms  are  degrading  and 
hurtful.  We  sympathized  with  Edward  Denison  in  London’s 
dreadful  East  End,  when  he  said  that  every  time  he  gave  away 
a  pound  he  felt  he  had  done  four  shillings  worth  of  good  and  six¬ 
teen  shillings  worth  of  harm.  We  insisted  that  no  relief  should 

♦Many  instances  might  he  cited.  For  a  striking  example  on  .  a  state¬ 
wide  basis  see,  in  Chap.  10  of  part  2,  the  result  of  the  curtailment  of 
outdoor  relief  by  two-thirds,  with  a  concurrent  decline  of  almshouse  popu¬ 
lation,  in  Indiana.  See  also  statistics  in  cities,  in  Proceedings  of  the 
National  Conference  for  1893,  pp.  60  and  69. 


54 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


be  given  except  as  a  step  to  something  better,  that  only  help  to 
self-help  was  either  just  or  kind.  We  had  not  then  the  lovely 
term  “home  service”  to  conjure  with;  that  our  wise  Mary  Rich- 
mond  gave  to  the  Red  Cross  in  1917 ;  but  we  had  the  idea  and 
oh  how  we  tried  to  live  up  to  it — and  how  often  we  failed. 

Many  of  the  A.  C.’s  and  C.  O.  S.’s  stressed  these  ideas  to  the 
extent  of  refusing  to  be  either  givers  or  custodians  of  relief  funds. 
But  the  almsgiving  tendency  was  strong.  We  had  to  secure  relief 
in  proper  cases,  and  if  your  purpose  or  your  main  method  is  relief, 
what’s  the  difference  except  in  extra  trouble  and  delay  between 
giving  and  securing  it?* 

When  the  report  on  Charity  Organization  in  Cities  was  made 
to  the  National  Conference  at  St.  Paul,  in  1886,  it  showed  that 
of  the  C.  O.  S.’s  and  A.  C.’s  then  at  work,  twenty  gave  relief 
from  their  oVn  funds  and  thirty-two  did  not.  The  Baltimore 
C.  O.  S.  invented  a  “Golden  Book  Fund”;  which  means  money 
ready  on  call  for  special  cases  from  B.  I.’s.f  That  was  copied  by 
one  or  two  societies. 

When  I  left  the  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati  for  the 
Charity  Organization  Society  of  Chicago  I  rejoiced  to  exchange 
service  in  a  relief-giving  for  that  in  a  non-relief -giving  organiza¬ 
tion  thinking  it  would  offer  a  safer  saner  basis  of  constructive 
effort.  But  as  Ingoldsby  Legends  have  it, 

“Who  can  fly  from  himself,  black  cares  when  you  feel  ’em 
Are  not  cured  by  distance,  as  Horace  says,  Coelum 
Non  animum  mutant  qui  currunt  trans  mare, 

’Tis  climate  not  mind  that  by  travel  men  vary.” 

The  pressure  of  the  numerous  cases  so  many  more  than  the  staff 
has  time  and  strength  to  do  more  with  than  to  investigate  and 
relieve ;  the  ever  insistent  need  of  some  relief  in  many  if  not  in 
most  cases:  the  fatal  facility  of  disposing  of  importunity  by 

*Zilpha  Smith  says  to  this,  “If  your  main  method  is  not  relief — don’t 
you  give  more  service  to  your  clients  and  help  more  *  *  *  agencies  in 

the  community  to  understand  what  service  may  be,  if  you  must  ask  for 
the  relief  needed  to  supplement  the  service,  and  justify  your  request  to 
yourself  as  well  as  to  them,  by  describing  it?”  and  Zilpha  is  right,  as  she 
always  is,  but  I  am  telling  of  my  own  adventures,  in  cities  not  so  fortunate 
as  Boston,  cities  where  the  relief  societies  were  bitterly  antagonistic. 

tB.  I.  benevolent  individual.  Thirty  years  ago  a  common  term,  now 
perhaps  obsolescent ;  tho  I  am  told  by  a  friendly  critic  who  has  just  gradu¬ 
ated  from  the  Boston  School  that  it  is  still  an  approved  term  there. 


Service  or  Relief 


55 


relief;  above  all  the  difficulty  of  convincing  our  subscribers, 
directors,  agents,  clients, — even  ourselves,  that  service  means 
more  and  is  worth  more  than  relief — and  even  the  cowardly  fear 
of  the  persistent  criticism  that  “overhead  is  too  large  for  the 
work  done”  (which  the  critics  measure  in  relief  given) ;  all  these 
together  were  too  strong  to  be  resisted. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  preventive  and  constructive  work 
may  be  done;  that  many  broken  families  may  be  rehabilitated. 
I  am  optimistic  enough  to  believe  that  the  societies  which  now 
are  being  wisely  guided  by  the  American  Association  for  Organ¬ 
izing  Family  Social  Work,  are  doing  many  fine  things  which  we 
in  the  Middle  West,  did  not  succeed  in  doing  or  in  doing  so  well 
thirty  or  forty  years  ago;  and  that  they  are  avoiding  and  will 
avoid  many  of  the  mistakes  and  failures  into  which  we  were 
betrayed.  But  altho  we  made  pretty  fair  investigations;  often 
were  able  to  help  people  by  employment;  did  fairly  good  case¬ 
work  and  much  thoro  and  effective  relief  (along  with  much  that 
was  superficial  and  ineffective) ;  we  can  not  fairly  claim  many 
reconstructed  families  during  the  early  years  of  the  A.  C.  of 
Cincinnati  and  the  C.  O.  S.  of  Chicago;  and  we  did  not  go  very 
far  in  removing  the  causes  of  poverty.* * 

My  hope  of  social  work  is  in  its  present  insistence  on  some¬ 
thing  widely  different  from  the  old  philanthropy,  an  insistence 
which  was  made  very  clear  in  an  absorbing  article  in  the  Survey 
Graphic  for  July  1922.  I  wish  every  reader  of  this  book  might 
first  read  that  illuminating  essay. 

I  must  remind  my  readers  that  I  am  telling  my  own  adven¬ 
tures,  not  attempting  the  history  of  the  A.  C.  movement.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  a  story  covering  the  years  1882  to  1889 ;  the  period 


♦Miss  Zilpha  Smith,  who  was  my  wisest  counselor  while  in  A.  0.  work, 
has  kindly  read  some  of  this  chapter.  She  says,  “these  pages  leave  the 
impression  that  the  trend  of  A.  C.  and  C.  O.  S.  in  many  cities  was  down , 

*  *  *  Whenever  the  standard  was  kept  in  mind,  by  doing  the  best 

work  one  was  capable  of  in  a  small  group  of  families  (italics  mine. — A.  J.) 
it  kept  it  in  other  people’s  minds  also,  or  introduced  it  there.  It  has  seemed 
to  me  *  *  *  that  such  leaven  was  there  and  worked  persistently,  and 

the  general  trend  of  case-work  in  and  out  of  the  Societies  *  *  *  was 

upward — that  there  grew  in  most  communities  a  stronger  sense  of  social 
responsibility  than  heretofore.”  Her  experience  was  in  Boston,  mine  in 
the  Middle  West,  hers  covered  many  years ;  mine,  in  the  actual  A.  C. 
work,  only  seven.  Then  the  New  England  mind  is  more  patient  than  ours. 
When  we  chop  we  want  to  see  the  chips  fly. 


56 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


during  which  these  first  adventures  of  mine  happened;  written 
by  Zilpha  Smith  about  the  Boston  Society,  would  be  widely  dif¬ 
ferent  from  mine.  But  I  have  seen  evidences  of  many  more 
instances  of  the  kind  I  suggest  than  of  the  better  sort.  Every¬ 
where  and  always  there  is  the  tendency  to  the  degradation  of 
charitable  energy  to  its  lowest  form,  that  of  material  relief ;  and 
while  the  tendency  may  be  offset  it  is  hard  to  do  it. 

When  the  C.  O.  S.  people  got  together  at  the  National  Confer¬ 
ence  at  St.  Paul  in  1886,  we  organized  what  we  called  “The 
Council  of  Charity  Officers”.  Its  special  purpose  besides  raising 
the  standard  of  our  own  professional  work  was  to  meet  and  deal 
with  members  of  another  profession,  the  traveling  mendicants, 
who  at  that  time  were  numerous  and  adroit. 

It  is  possible  that  the  Council  and  those  who  were  influenced 
by  it  were  unduly  interested  in  the  repressive  side  of  charity 
organization  which  however  necessary  is  never  popular.  The 
benevolent  would  far  rather  hear  of  distressed  folks  being  aided 
than  of  imposters  being  detected.  Much  of  the  criticism  of  the 
movement  in  its  early  days,  when  people  spoke  of  it  sarcastically 
as  the  “Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Benevolence”,  and  John 
Boyle  O’Reilly  wrote  of, 

“Organized  Charity  scrimped  and  iced, 

In  the  name  of  a  cautious  statistical  Christ.” 

was  due  to  the  stress  laid  on  the  repressive  side.  People  often 
say  that  they  would  rather  feed  ten  frauds  than  let  one  honest 
sufferer  go  hungry. 

The  first  Charity  Organization  Society,  that  of  London,  grew 
out  of  the  Mendicity  Society  whose  prime  object  was  to  stop 
street  begging ;  the  lasting  unpopularity  of  that  C.  O.  S.  may  have 
had  that  fact  for  one  of  its  causes.  It  may  be  questioned  whether 
it  is  not  possible  to  go  too  far  in  eradicating  even  so  great  an 
evil.  When  we  remember  that  it  is  emphatically  more  blessed 
to  give  than  to  receive ;  that  the  benefit  of  all  philanthropic  work 
is  always  to  the  giver  or  helper  more  than  to  the  receiver;  and 
think  how  many  people  will  give  spasmodic  alms  and  so  get  some 
little  cultivation  of  their  humane  instincts ;  who  otherwise  would 
miss  the  benefit  of  the  grace  entirely,  the  matter  may  be  at  least 
disputable.  No  one  can  read  Charles  Lamb’s  essay  on  the  “Decay 
of  Beggars”  and  not  at  least  consider  this  side. 


Service  or  Relief 


57 


We  do  well  to  say  that  irregular  alms  are  hurtful  and  cause 
much  more  suffering  than  they  relieve.  But  we  should  not  forget 
that;  unless  it  is  accompanied  by  successful  efforts  for  the  perma¬ 
nent  benefit  of  those  We  aid ;  the  same  is  true  in  the  long  run  of 
all  or  nearly  all  relief  no  matter  how  scientifically  adjusted. 

But  the  evil  results  of  alms  are  not  alone  nor  chiefly  to  the 
recipients.  When  by  charity  we  make  it  possible  for  people  to 
work  for  less  than  a  living  wage  we  lower  the  average  standard 
of  wages ;  and  that  means  the  standard  of  living  for  all  the  lowest 
class  of  laborers.  Every  thoughtful  and  observant  relief  agent, 
has  seen  specific  instances  of  this  awful  fact. 

When  a  “Home  for  Self  Supporting  Women”  was  planned  in 
Chicago  in  1887,  the  promoters  waited  on  the  proprietor  of  The 
Fair,  a  large  department  store  employing  many  hundred  girl 
clerks,  for  a  subscription.  He  asked  how  much  they  meant  to 
charge  the  girls  for  board  and  lodging  and  they  said  $3.50  per 
week.  He  cheerfully  offered  them  $500.00  because  he  said  it 
would  enable  him  to  cut  the  wages  of  each  of  his  girls  at  least 
fifty  cents  a  week.  His  cynical  acquiescence  made  them  pause. 
I  have  known  of  women  working  fourteen  hours  daily  in  one  of 
the  lowest  branches  of  the  needle  trade,  yet  paid  so  little  that 
they  would  have  starved  had  they  not  been  getting  “chariU/” 
from  the  city  relief  department.  We  do  well  to  enact  laws  for 
minimum  wages. 

One  of  the  effects  on  a  thinking  mind  of  many  years  of  varied 
social  work  is  a  profound  distrust  of  relief  in  every  form ;  a  posi¬ 
tive  conviction  that  its  complete  eradication ;  except  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  overwhelming  disaster;  would  be  a  great  social  gain. 
One  of  my  most  ardent  hopes  for  social  welfare  is  that  this  will 
some  day  be  possible;  that  one  of  the  purposes  of  social  work  is 
to  bring  it  about.*  And  this  is  said  without  minimizing  the  fact 
that  under  present  social  conditions  a  vast  amount  of  relief  is 
necessary ;  and  the  present  trend  towards  being  less  niggardly  is 
a  righteous  one. 

But  when  all  we  hope  for  shall  be  done ;  when  bitter  grinding 

♦For  a  splendidly  inspired  vision  of  what  onr  hopes  as  social  workers 
are.  see  Frederic  Almy’s  presidential  address  at  the  National  Conference 
of  1917,  on  “The  Conquest  of  Poverty”.  Almy  is  a  poet,  a  prophet,  a  seer, 
and  his  prophecy  is  based  on  many  long  years  of  faithful  work  in  organized 
charity. 


58 


Family  Welfare  Work  in  the  Eighties 


poverty  shall  no  longer  be  known  among  us;  the  human  heart 
will  still  need  a  vent  for  its  benign  impulses.  May  that  not  be  in 
a  return  to  the  ancient  classic  form  of  benevolence  which  found 
its  exercise  in  increasing  the  joys  instead  of  relieving  the  pains 
of  the  less  fortunate?  “The  world  has  such  need  of  joy.”  Our 
working  people  or  so  many  of  them,  lead  such  drab,  dull,  sordid, 
hopeless,  cheerless  lives.  Even  tho  disease,  hunger  and  cold  are 
conquered  there  will  be  abounding  opportunity  for  real  philan¬ 
thropy.  So  we  give  the  heartiest  welcome  into  our  fellowship  of 
social  workers,  to  those  whose  professed  aim  is  not  relief  nor  even 
prevention  of  poverty  but  a  saner,  healthier  more  joyous  life. 
Some  day  we  may  apply  to  all  our  philanthropy  the  radiant  motto 
of  the  schools  for  feeble-minded,  “happiness  comes  first,  all  else 
follows”. 


Chapter  Three 


MY  ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  CHARITY  ORGANIZATION 

SOCIETY  OF  CHICAGO 

The  Charity  Organization  Society  was  begun  in  Chicago  in 
1883,  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  Gurteen  who  had  been  the 
inspirer  altho  never  the  executive  of  the  society  in  Buffalo.  When 
I  took  charge  in  April  1886,  it  had  a  central  office  without  any 
effective  organization ;  one  rather  well  managed  district  office  on 
the  edge  of  the  Southside  residence  section  in  charge  of  an  agent 
of  much  ability  and  great  experience  in  relief  work ;  and  a  provi¬ 
dent  wood  yard  for  tramps  very  poorly  managed  and  costing  the 
society  about  $60.00  per  month  more  than  it  was  bringing  in. 

The  society  had  a  small  group  of  supporters  among  them  a 
very  few  wealthy  men.  Mr.  Gurteen  had  resigned  at  the  end  of 
his  first  year  and  after  a  checkered  career  of  a  year  or  two,  a 
strenuous  effort  had  been  made  to  raise  a  fund  sufficient  to  secure 
an  efficient  general  secretary;  and  understanding  that  the  Cin¬ 
cinnati  secretary  was  efficient  and  available  he  was  summoned. 

In  the  course  of  two  and  a  half  years  following;  the  central 
office  was  well  organized  and  provided  with  a  special  department 
for  non-residents;  additional  district  offices  were  established  on 
the  West  and  North  sides ;  the  wood  yard  had  been  changed  from 
being  a  steady  drain  to  the  point  of  self  support  or  a  little  over ; 
the  income  had  increased  from  $5000.00  to  $11,000.00  per  annum 
and  the  society  was  so  firmly  established  that  its  old  antagonist 
the  Relief  and  Aid  Society  thought  it  was  about  time  to  take 
some  notice  of  it  other  than  denouncing  it  as  an  interloper  and  a 
fraud. 

The  Relief  and  Aid  Society 

It  is  necessary  to  tell  part  of  the  story  of  this  opposing  society 
because  the  facts  constitute  a  noteworthy  episode  in  the  history 
of  social  work;  and  because  without  knowing  them  it  is  impos 


(59) 


60 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


sible  to  understand  the  tragic  fate  of  the  C.  O.  S.  The  episode  is 
important  because  similar  things  are  occurring  today,  the  lessons 
to  be  drawn  are  of  present  value. 

The  Relief  and  Aid  Society  began  in  1857  as  a  union  of  three 
agencies,  which  had  been  competing  and  duplicating  each  other’s 
work.  For  a  while  it  did  fairly  good  work.  Tho  it  never  attempted 
the  original  Hamburgh  plan  of  districting  the  city,  it  ranked 
itself  with  the  A.  I.  C.  P.’s  and  Provident  Associations  of  other 
cities  and  claimed  to  be  the  last  word  as  a  city  relief  agency. 
At  the  time  of  the  great  Chicago  fire  it  assumed  charge  of  the 
relief  and  did  it  well.  The  disaster  had  attracted  a  flood  of  money 
from  all  over  the  world  and  when  the  immediate  relief  was  con¬ 
cluded  nearly  $800,000.00  or  about  ten  per  cent  of  the  total 
received  remained  on  hand;  of  this  a  considerable  sum  was 
divided  between  eighteen  charitable  organizations  whose  build¬ 
ings  had  been  burned,  or  whose  incomes  had  been  depleted.  These 
agencies  had  been  partially  supported  out  of  fire-relief  funds  for 
a  few  months  following  the  fire  and  when  they  accepted  the  money 
for  rebuilding  they  gave  the  Relief  and  Aid  a  sort  of  lien  on 
their  accommodations  for  its  clients.  These  liens  and  the  fact 
that  it  began  as  an  amalgamation  of  agencies  were  the  basis  of  a 
claim ;  made  more  loudly  as  C.  O.  S.  became  popular;  that  it  was 
in  effect  a  charity  organization  society. 

In  the  annual  report  for  1887,  the  following  astounding  claim 
was  made:  “This  society  was  the  first  in  the  United  States,  if 
not  in  the  world,  to  inaugurate  and  practically  achieve  the  idea 
of  Organization  of  Charities  and  Associated  Charities.” 

After  the  conclusion  of  the  immediate  fire-relief  and  the  dis¬ 
tribution  to  the  various  agencies  the  rest  of  the  huge  fund 
remained  with  the  society;  first  to  meet  any  aftermath  of  dis¬ 
tress  chargeable  to  the  fire  and  then  for  ordinary  relief  work. 
The  treasurer  reported  interest  on  the  money  on  hand  but  at  a 
rate  of  about  one-third  that  current  in  the  city.  The  society’s 
printed  report  for  1873  showed  that  on  Jan.  1st,  1874,  two  years 
and  three  months  after  the  fire  the  balance  on  hand  was 
$702,543.10  and  the  amount  credited  to  interest  was  $26,340.53,  or 
about  3.7  per  cent.  Gilt  edge  commercial  paper  was  paying  10, 
11,  and  12  per  cent  at  that  time. 


The  Relief  and  Aid  Society 


61 


The  only  permanent  investment  was  the  purchase  of  a  down¬ 
town  lot  on  which  a  four  story  and  basement  house  was  built  for 
offices,  the  basement  being  rented  out.  This  was  poorly  located 
and  did  not  increase  in  value  as  rapidly  as  most  Chicago  real- 
estate.  It  seems  incredible,  or  it  would  seem  so  were  there  not 
things  much  like  it  occurring  today,  that  a  board  of  directors 
composed  of  leading  business  and  professional  men  of  a  pro¬ 
gressive  city  should  have  sanctioned  or  permitted  the  gradual 
wasting  away  of  this  splendid  fund  in  almsgiving ;  more  especially 
when  we  consider  the  possibility  of  judicious  investment  at  that 
time. 

A  very  natural  almost  inevitable  result  of  the  existence  of 
the  big  fund  was  that  for  a  time  relief  was  given  with  a  lavish 
hand  especially  to  anyone  who  had  suffered  by  the  fire.  One  of 
the  interesting  aftermaths  of  lavishness  was  that  the  city  got  a 
reputation  in  the  Middle  West  and  even  farther  afield  as  being 
a  place  where  alms  were  plenty  and  easily  gotten.  In  subsequent 
years  relief  agents  in  the  city  actually  came  upon  pauperized 
families  or  families  desiring  pauperization  who  had  moved  to 
Chicago  during  the  year  following  the  fire  because  it  was  an  easy 
place  to  live  without  hard  labor. 

Thereafter  for  thirteen  years  no  subscriptions  were  solicited 
for  the  society.  The  fund  slowly  drained  away.  Six  years  after 
the  fire  it  was  $139,011.52.  For  that  year  the  interest  credited 
was  $4,229.59.  By  1884  it  had  got  down  to  $23,264.23  and  the 
interest  was  only  $326.11.  The  next  year  subscriptions  were 
called  for  and  over  $30,000.00  was  collected.  Before  this  time 
as  the  fund  was  wasted  the  old  liberal  methods  were  long  out¬ 
worn  and  relief  was  given  in  niggardly  doles.  And  niggardly 
dole-relief  was  the  society’s  sole  activity. 

For  many  years  the  general  superintendent  added  to  his  relief 
work  the  duty  of  presiding  elder  over  the  Rock  River  Conference 
of  the  M.  E.  Church,  said  to  be  the  largest  in  the  world.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  he  was  an  able  and  astute  man.  One  after¬ 
noon  during  the  panic  winter  of  1873,  he  was  sitting  in  his  office 
when  his  negro  janitor  rushed  in  and  reported  that  a  mob  of  men 
and  women  led  by  some  of  the  anarchists  who  were  giving  trouble 
in  Chicago  then  were  coming  up  the  street  headed  for  the  office 
and  threatening  violence  if  they  were  refused  money.  The  super- 


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Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


intendent  met  the  mob  at  the  outer  door,  greeted  them  courteously 
and  requested  that  ten  or  twelve  of  their  leaders  would  come  into 
the  office  and  state  their  case.  Then  he  marshalled  those  who 
claimed  leadership  into  the  board  room  seated  them  at  the 
directors’  table  passed  round  a  box  of  cigars  and  asked  them  what 
they  desired.  They  told  him  the  people  were  starving  and  the 
society  had  money  which  should  be  disbursed.  He  told  them  he 
was  glad  they  had  come;  they  were  just  the  men  he  wanted  to 
see ;  that  he  and  his  helpers  were  doing  their  best ;  but  it  was  hard 
to  find  the  right  people  to  give  to  but  that  they  knew  the  poor 
since  they  lived  among  them.  Then  he  asked  them  to  choose  ten 
capable  trustworthy  men  from  their  number  to  report  to  him  the 
next  morning;  that  he  would  add  them  to  his  force  of  visitors  at 
$3.00  per  day  and  a  liberal  allowance  for  car  fare  and  between 
them  the  real  poor  could  be  found  and  helped.  The  leaders  went 
back  to  the  mob  and  assured  them  that  all  was  well;  that  the 
relief  society  was  going  to  do  the  right  thing  and  the  crowd  dis¬ 
persed.  The  new  visitors  were  allowed  to  report  all  the  cases 
they  found  for  a  week  and  then  paid  off. 

The  society’s  board  of  directors  was  a  rather  close  corpora¬ 
tion.  They  met  monthly  and  gravely  voted  approval  of  the  super¬ 
intendent’s  report;  and  met  annually  to  gravely  re-elect  them¬ 
selves  filling  vacancies  with  names  of  ambitious  young  business 
men  who  were  glad  to  join  so  dignified  a  body  even  as  figure¬ 
heads  among  figure-heads.  At  the  annual  meeting  they  gravely 
approved  the  superintendent’s  annual  report,  gave  him  a  vote  of 
thanks  and  a  substantial  bonus  to  supplement  his  liberal  salary 
and  re-elected  him. 

The  real  governing  body  was  an  executive  committee  of  three, 
consisting  of  the  treasurer  mentioned  above  the  superintendent 
and  one  other.  This  triumvirate  enjoyed  the  absolute  confidence 
of  the  board  which  had  the  vaguest  idea  of  what  its  agents  were 
doing  in  its  name.  The  annual  report  which  was  officially 
addressed  to  the  Mayor,  usually  contained  a  string  of  platitudes 
reiterating  the  methods  of  which  the  society  approved ;  congratu¬ 
lated  it  upon  its  existence  and  record;  told  how  because  of  its 
lien  on  the  institutions,  etc.  it  was  a  real  organization  of  the 
charities;  emphasized  the  difference  between  relief  to  paupers, 
which  was  the  city’s  business,  and  aid  to  the  worthy  poor,  which 


The  C.  O.  8.  Making  Good 


63 


was  its  own;  pointed  out  the  dangers  of  miscellaneous  charity 
and  the  value  and  safety  of  that  dispensed  by  its  experienced 
employees.  It  specially  stressed  that  the  Society’s  purpose  was 
to  give  temporary  aid  in  emergencies  referring  all  chronic  cases 
to  the  city  alms  department  with  which  it  carefully  abstained 
from  interfering  or  competing. 

Meanwhile  the  city  was  overrun  with  beggars.  The  various 
church  aid  societies,  national  organizations,  etc.  could  get  no 
assistance  not  even  any  advice  from  the  Belief  and  Aid.  Its 
agents  were  hard-boiled  its  methods  with  clients  cold  and  unsym¬ 
pathetic.  Its  officers  and  directors,  feeling  themselves  because 
of  their  funded  wealth  independent  of  public  favor,  were  oblivious 
of  any  need  to  conciliate  or  co-operate  with  other  agencies.  They 
would  not  even  consider  the  case  of  a  client  who  did  not  apply 
in  person  at  the  office  unless  the  name  was  sent  in  by  a  member 
of  the  board.  Every  case  presented  was  closely  scanned  and  an 
applicant  who  seemed  to  have  a  claim  on  any  other  agency  was 
refused  help  and  told  to  apply  elsewhere.  An  able-bodied,  unmar¬ 
ried  man  or  woman  applicant  was  refused  even  a  hearing  no 
matter  in  what  emergency.  It  was  very  plain  that  the  purpose 
of  investigation  was  if  possible  to  find  a  reason  for  refusing  help 
or  treatment. 

It  was  easy  to  understand  why  such  a  society  so  officered 
should  bitterly  oppose  the  C.  O.  S.  Also  not  difficult  to  see  why 
business  men  with  no  particular  interest  in  social  work;  who 
saw  the  society  doing  its  relief  work  at  least  on  the  surface 
passably  well  and  not  asking  them  for  money;  should  be  willing 
to  let  well  enough  alone. 

The  C.  O.  S.  Making  Good. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  was  no  trouble  with  anything 
like  reasonably  good  management  to  establish  organized  charity 
in  Chicago;  despite  the  strenuous  opposition  of  the  old  society. 
When  its  fiscal  year  closed  on  Sept.  30th,  1888,  the  C.  O.  S.  had 
a  firm  footing  in  the  city  and  a  substantial  body  of  subscribers. 

This  favorable  condition  had  not  been  gained  without  great 
effort.  The  society  was  organized  on  the  non-relief  giving  plan 
so  co-operation  was  its  most  essential  need  and  no  opportunity  to 
secure  that  was  neglected.  The  Belief  and  Aid  was  hostile,  but 


64 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


the  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  the  National  Associations  for  the  relief 
of  their  compatriots  in  distress,  English,  Polish,  Bohemian, 
French,  German,  Swedish  and  others  asked  for  co-operation  and 
help.  Many  church  aid  societies  worked  with  the  C.  O.  S.  in 
helpful  harmony.  Being  of  English  birth  I  joined  the  St.  George’s 
Benevolent  Society  became  its  secretary  and  did  all  its  relief 
work  thru  the  C.  O.  S.  Several  of  the  foreign  consuls  used  the 
office  and  our  agents  when  they  had  distressed  people  to  aid. 

Most  applications  for  help  come  in  the  day  time  but  some  of 
the  most  difficult  for  a  benevolent  person  to  refuse  are  made 
after  dark.  To  meet  the  need  of  our  subscribers  we  kept  the 
central  office  open  until  10 :30  every  night  and  also  on  Sunday 
from  2  to  4  and  from  7  to  10:30  p.  m.  Cases  during  evening  or 
Sunday  hours  were  very  rare  but  there  are  some  adroit  pro¬ 
fessional  beggars  who  are  skilful  enough  to  apply  with  a  piteous 
tale  at  a  time  when  they  know  it  will  be  difficult  for  people  to 
investigate  their  cases.  I  took  a  fair  share  of  the  evening  office- 
work  myself,  using  the  time  which  was  rarely  broken  in  on  by 
an  application  to  catch  up  with  my  correspondence. 

One  Saturday  night  at  ten  o’clock  I  was  called  up  by  tele¬ 
phone  by  a  member  of  the  Belief  and  Aid  board.  He  told  me  that 
he  was  appealed  to  by  a  case  which  his  society  could  not  under¬ 
take  at  that  hour  and  wanted  to  know  if  the  C.  O.  S.  was  better 
equipped.  I  told  him  we  would  attend  to  it.  He  then  said  there 
was  a  woman  at  his  door  on  Prairie  Ave.  who  claimed  to  have  a 
houseful  of  starving  children  at  842  West  North  Ave.  I  told  him 
to  give  her  car-fare  and  that  our  agent  would  be  there  before 
she  could  arrive  as  we  were  two  miles  nearer  her  alleged  location ; 
that  we  would  give  immediate  emergency  aid  if  it  seemed  neces¬ 
sary  and  take  up  the  case  thoroly  on  Monday. 

I  sent  a  boy  with  explicit  directions,  who  soon  reported  by 
phone  that  there  was  no  such  number  on  the  street.  I  knew  the 
neighborhood  as  one  of  the  thrifty  middle  class  ones  and  was 
quite  sure  it  was  a  false  address;  however  I  told  my  agent  to 
enquire  at  the  corner  drug  store  and  any  other  place  he  could 
reach.  I  then  called  up  the  gentleman  and  reported  the  result 
of  the  search;  he  was  evidently  dissatisfied  but  being  a  sincerely 
benevolent  man,  he  spent  Sunday  morning  hunting  thru  the  dis¬ 
trict  and  convinced  himself  that  my  report  was  justified.  On 


The  C.  O.  S.  Making  Good 


65 


Tuesday  he  sent  a  check  for  $50,  with  a  note  acknowledging  the 
need  and  the  value  of  C.  O.  S.  methods. 

The  Legal  Aid  Society  which  was  begun  in  1887  grew  partly 
out  of  some  legal  aid  given  by  the  C.  O.  S.  I  became  a  member 
of  its  advisory  board;  also  of  the  executive  committee  of  the 
Humane  Society  and  other  agencies  of  the  kind.  All  this  took 
time  and  strength  but  it  is  the  method  of  co-operation.  My 
motto,  parodied  from  Terence,  was  “I  am  social  and  no  social 
agency  do  I  count  indifferent  to  me”. 

The  beginning  of  the  legal  aid  work  of  the  C.  O.  S.  which  had 
some  effect  in  the  establishment  of  the  Legal  Aid  Society  came 
out  of  a  case  undertaken  for  us  by  a  firm  of  young  lawyers  who 
wanted  to  help  but  had  more  time  than  money  to  give.  A  client 
of  ours  had  borrowed  $25  on  his  chattels ;  he  had  paid  in  instal¬ 
ments,  interest,  fees  for  renewals  etc.,  more  than  $35,  and  on  the 
face  of  his  account  he  still  owed  more  than  the  original  loan. 
The  lawyer  followed  the  case  from  the  office  of  one  firm  of  loan 
sharks  to  another,  as  the  loan  had  been  transferred,  according 
to  the  devious  practices  of  that  day,  took  the  case  into  court  and 
finally  settled  the  account  for  $5.  From  the  day  of  that  case 
in  court  it  was  only  necessary  for  the  sharks  to  know  that  C.  O.  S. 
had  a  case  in  hand  to  make  them  willing  to  compromise  on  a 
fair  basis.  As  soon  the  Legal  Aid  Society  began  its  work  the 
C.  O.  S.  according  to  our  invariable  policy  of  co-operation,  turned 
over  all  its  legal  cases  to  that  agency. 

One  of  the  most  insistent  needs  of  a  C.  O.  S.  is  to  establish 
the  proper  connection  in  the  minds  of  the  public,  and  particu¬ 
larly  of  its  subscribers,  between  themselves,  the  society  and  the 
people  in  trouble.  Each  Spring  at  a  time  when  business  is  good 
and  the  opening  of  navigation  lessens  the  crowd  of  transients 
who  winter  in  the  city,  a  small  envelope  was  prepared  carrying 
on  its  face  the  legend,  “Do  not  give  to  beggars  but  send  them 
with  one  of  the  enclosed  cards,  bearing  your  name  and  address, 
to  the  C.  O.  S.  Note  the  guarantee  on  the  back.”  On  the  other 
side  it  read,  “The  C.  O.  S.  guarantees  to  avert  present  actual  suf¬ 
fering  from  any  person  sent  to  its  office  with  one  of  the  tickets 
enclosed,  who  is  not  known  as  an  imposter  or  professional  beggar, 
and  to  secure  adequate  relief,  or  failing  to  do  so  to  report  that 
fact  to  the  sender.”  In  each  envelope  there  were  four  tickets 


CG 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


with  the  central  office  address  and  a  place  for  the  sender’s  name 
and  a  fifth  which  read  “If  you  desire  a  supply  of  these  tickets, 
phone  or  send  a  postal  to  the  office,  116  La  Salle  St.,  phone  184 
and  they  will  be  sent  to  you  without  charge.”  In  1887  and  1888, 
10,000  such  envelopes  were  enough  to  place  one  on  each  business 
man’s  desk  in  the  commercial  district  where  beggars  most  con¬ 
gregated. 

The  distribution  took  about  one  week.  Most  of  the  people 
getting  the  tickets  gave  them  to  beggars  and  a  few  of  these  came 
to  the  office.  Each  case  was  investigated  and  treated;  and  the 
signed  ticket  with  a  brief  report  of  what  had  been  done  and  why 
was  mailed  the  next  day  to  the  sender.  One  man  brought  in 
nineteen  tickets  of  which  all  but  two  bore  the  sender’s  name.  He 
presented  a  good  case  for  a  certain  amount  of  relief  which  was 
secured  for  him  and  seventeen  people  got  a  satisfactory  story 
of  the  effects  of  using  our  tickets.  A  few  stingy  or  careless 
people  used  the  tickets  without  giving  us  their  names,  but  most 
of  the  users  were  interested  enough  in  the  guarantee  to  try 
it  out. 

As  the  signed  tickets  were  received  the  sender’s  names  were 
listed  and  after  a  second  case  had  come  from  one  person  he  was 
called  on  with  a  polite  offer  of  a  book  of  tickets  to  be  used  if  he 
wished  us  to  continue  the  service.  A  frequent  question  was 
“how  much  does  this  cost?”  the  answer  was  “nothing”.  “Then 
how  is  the  society  supported?”  “By  subscriptions.”  “Who  is 
the  collector?”  answer  “I  am”  and  a  small  or  large  check  would 
follow,  and  the  society  had  made  a  friend  and  supporter.  My 
consistent  policy  was — do  the  work — do  it  well, — make  it  known, 
then  support  is  certain. 

Then  a  card  6"  by  4"  in  a  neat  frame  was  offered  to  the  sub¬ 
scribers  to  hang  in  their  offices.  The  card  read  “We  subscribe 
to  the  Charity  Organization  Society  and  refer  all  applicants  for 
aid  to  its  office”.  Some  subscribers  hung  the  card  on  their  outer 
office  railing:  its  value  in  discouraging  applicants  whose  cases 
would  not  bear  investigation,  was  evident.  Occasionally  a 
request  for  one  of  the  cards  came  from  a  non-subscriber;  of 
course  the  card  was  taken  to  him  by  the  authorized  collector 
who  could  have  no  better  introduction.  The  vice-president  of  the 
largest  bank  in  the  city  hung  his  card  on  the  office  wall  beside 


The  C.  O.  S.  Making  Good 


67 


his  desk  where  it  would  catch  the  eye  of  a  customer  who  came  to 
talk  loans  and  discounts.  The  value  to  the  society  of  such  an  ad 
was  inestimable. 

The  story  of  this  gentleman’s  conversion  to  active  co-operation 
is  useful  as  it  illustrates  the  methods  adopted.  He  was  Lyman 
Gage  afterwards  secretary  of  the  Treasury  under  McKinley.  He 
was  a  fellow  member  with  me  of  the  advisory  board  of  the  Legal 
Aid  Society.  Coming  away  together  from  a  meeting  he  asked 
me  how  C.  O.  S.  was  prospering.  I  told  him  fairly  well,  but  that 
our  own  subscribers  did  not  use  us  as  they  might.  He  said,  “yes, 
I  know,  I  don’t,  I  had  a  case  yesterday  when  I  hesitated  between 
one  of  your  tickets  and  a  dollar,  and  finally  the  dollar  won”. 
When  I  asked  him  about  the  case  he  said  “oh  it  was  a  good  case 
for  help  all  right,  the  fellow  was  no  beggar,  he  was  a  worker,  I 
could  tell  by  his  hands,  he  was  a  railroad  man,  just  come  from 
the  South,  had  work  to  go  to  in  three  days  and  had  a  wife  and 
two  children”.  I  said  in  an  enquiring  tone  “You  gave  him  a 
dollar t”  “Yes,  how  much  should  I  have  given  him?”  “Well,” 
I  said,  “you  know  a  family  that  size  could  not  live  in  Chicago 
for  three  days  on  a  dollar,  I  should  think  ten  or  fifteen  would  be 
the  least  you  could  have  made  it.”  “Well,”  he  said,  “I  can’t  give 
fifteen  dollars  to  every  one  who  asks  me.”  I  said  “Why  cer¬ 
tainly  not,  but  just  consider  what  you  actually  did ;  we  will  pre¬ 
sume  your  diagnosis  of  the  case  was  accurate  he  had  never 
begged  before;  in  all  his  life  he  had  never  had  a  dollar  that  had 
not  cost  him  two  or  three  hours  of  hard  work.  You  did  not  help 
him  out  of  the  hole  he  was  in  but  you  showed  him  how  easy  it  is 
to  get  money  without  work.  Don’t  you  see  that  you  really  may 
have  given  him  not  help  but  his  first  shove  downwards  into 
beggary  and  degradation?” 

It  felt  so  good  to  have  a  millionaire  at  my  mercy  that  I 
rubbed  it  in.  Mr.  Gage  was  furious,  he  spluttered  as  he  cried 
“well,  sir,  what  would  you  have  done  had  I  sent  him  to  you?” 
I  replied  “I  don’t  know,  every  client  presents  an  individual 
problem  to  me,  but  I  will  tell  you  what  I  did  in  a  similar  case 
two  weeks  ago”.  I  then  gave  him  the  details  of  a  well-handled 
case  of  an  Englishman,  sent  me  by  the  St.  George’s  Society,  in 
which  begging  was  averted  and  the  family  set  on  its  feet;  the 
man  first  earning  a  little  at  the  wood  yard  then  being  given  some 


68 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


transient  jobs  and  then  found  steady  employment: — the  whole 
treatment  costing  sixty-five  cents  for  the  family’s  first  meal 
which  was  paid  by  the  St.  George’s  Society,  and  brains. 

Mr.  Gage  said,  “Mr.  Johnson,  I’ll  never  do  it  again  so  long 
as  you  are  in  the  city”  then  he  added,  “But  yours  is  not  a  relief 
society,  how  will  you  help  the  cases  I  send?”  I  replied  “Mr. 
Gage,  if  you  send  me  one  of  your  poor  brothers  in  distress  and 
$5  or  $10  of  your  money  will  really  help  him  you  shall  have 
the  privilege  of  giving  it”.  To  which  he  replied,  that  was  well 
in  theory,  but  he  might  be  away  or  busy,  and  he  would  give  me 
a  check  for  $50  to  be  used  for  people  whom  he  might  send.  I 
answered  I  would  accept  the  money  to  use  for  him  if  he  would 
promise  to  read  the  report  I  would  send  of  every  case;  to  this 
after  some  demur  he  agreed.  The  first  check  lasted  for  over 
two  years  and  the  last  of  it  was  used  with  his  consent  to  settle 
a  chattel  mortgage  case  which  had  not  come  from  him.  It  was 
the  next  day  after  our  interview  that  he  hung  our  card  beside 
his  desk. 


An  Adventure  in  Publicity 

It  is  not  enough  to  do  good  work  for  the  public,  if  you  want 
public  approval  and  support  you  must  make  your  good  work 
known.  The  best  avenue  of  publicity  is  the  daily  press.  We 
used  the  newspapers  to  the  utmost  they  would  let  us  and  most 
of  them  were  favorable  tho  two  were  indifferent  or  slightly  hos¬ 
tile.  At  the  time  as  always  there  was  a  strong  demand  for 
H.  I.  stories*  and  I  incurred  the  dislike  of  some  reporters  who 
wished  to  write  up  some  striking  cases  of  people  in  distress  giving 
names  and  addresses  which  of  course  had  to  be  withheld.  Because 
we  could  not  secure  all  the  publicity  of  the  kind  we  desired  in 
the  newspapers  it  seemed  necessary  to  create  some  regular 
method  of  making  our  work  known. 

In  May  1887,  I  began  a  monthly  publication  which  I  called 
“The  Reporter  of  Organized  Charity”  taking  on  myself  the  whole 
risk  and  hoping  to  support  the  publication  by  advertising.  This 
was  approved  by  my  Board  tho  not  supported  by  it,  altho  the 
formal  vote  of  approval  carried  a  promise  of  liberal  support  so 
soon  as  the  society’s  funds  should  justify  it.  I  printed  10,000 


♦Human.  Interest  stories  always  welcome  to  a  newspaper. 


Adventures  in  Publicity 


69 


copies  monthly  getting  a  few  cash  subscriptions  at  fifty  cents 
per  annum  sending  one  copy  by  mail  to  each  member  of  the 
C.  O.  S.  and  by  special  permission  of  the  city  government  was 
allowed  to  distribute  the  rest  from  house  to  house  in  the  three 
residence  districts,  the  South  side,  the  North  side  and  the  West 
side,  once  in  three  months  in  each. 

Each  issue  carried  a  half -page  ad  of  the  woodyard  and  it  was 
easy  to  tell  into  which  section  the  paper  had  gone  by  the  orders 
which  came  in  for  hardwood  and  kindling  during  the  month.  Of 
course  I  charged  the  woodyard  account  for  the  ad  at  regular 
rates,  but  this  was  all  the  help  I  got  from  the  society  except  the 
use  of  its  name.  The  value  of  the  publication  was  made  very 
evident  at  the  time  of  a  general  appeal  for  funds  in  October  1888. 
In  this  speculation  by  the  end  of  the  first  year  I  had  sunk  about 
$1100  and  seven  members  of  the  Board  formed  a  syndicate  and 
lent  me  most  of  the  money  I  had  put  in  or  rather  helped  me  out 
of  debt.  This  was  in  May  1888,  at  a  time  when  I  was  threat¬ 
ened  with  a  nervous  breakdown  which  my  directors  dreaded. 
The  loan  was  conditioned  that  if  as  I  believed  and  they  doubted 
the  venture  should  prove  self-supporting  by  October  following 
the  money  should  be  repaid  as  soon  as  the  executive  committee 
gave  its  promised  support;  otherwise  the  publication  was  to  be 
dropped  and  the  loan  cancelled. 

The  paper  did  so  well  that  in  September  I  was  able  to  make 
a  contract  with  a  trustworthy  publishing  house  to  get  it  out  for 
the  advertising  which  they  would  solicit;  I  to  edit  it  and  censor 
the  advertising.  This  bid  fair  to  repay  all  the  money  I  had  put 
in  even  without  help  from  my  society  as  under  the  contract  I 
was  to  have  all  cash  subscriptions  and  one-third  of  any  money 
received  for  advertising  I  should  secure.  This  showing  of  success 
confirmed  my  obligation  to  repay  the  loan.  The  suppression  of 
the  paper  was  one  of  the  minor  tragedies  of  the  disastrous 
amalgamation  to  be  told  of  later;  and  years  afterward  I  repaid 
three  members  of  the  benevolent  syndicate  who  by  that  time  had 
become  as  poor  as  I,  the  other  four  remaining  wealthy  cancelled 
the  obligation. 

At  that  time  pamphlets  on  scientific  organized  charity  were 
in  great  demand,  a  twenty-four  page  tract  published  by  the 
Boston  A.  C.  had  a  circulation  of  over  100,000;  one  four  page 


70 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


leaflet  by  Dr.  Wayland  of  New  Haven  was  widely  reprinted  and 
more  than  50,000  copies  were  sold.  I  made  one  reprint  as  a 
tract,  called  “Methods  and  Machinery  of  Organized  Charity”  of 
which  I  sold  3,500.  This  suggested  the  next  step  which  was  a 
monthly  partial  reprint  without  any  advertising ;  of  a  few  of  the 
best  articles  in  the  Reporter.  This  I  called  “The  Council”, 
named  for  the  Council  of  Charity  Officers,  the  society  which 
Rosenau  and  I  organized  in  1886,  at  the  National  Conference  at 
St.  Paul. 

The  Council  paid  its  way  from  the  first  issue.  Various 
C.  O.  S.’s  in  other  cities  subscribed  for  many  copies.  It  was 
entered  at  the  post  office  so  it  could  be  circulated  at  a  trifling 
cost.  The  C.  O.  S.  of  New  York  took  1,000  copies  of  a  special 
edition  bearing  that  society’s  imprint;  of  these  350  went  to  the 
office  in  bulk  and  650  were  mailed  from  Chicago  to  a  list  of 
N.  Y.  members.  For  this  service  the  New  York  society  paid 
$110  per  annum  for  ten  issues  thus  putting  into  the  hands  of 
their  members  a  readable  tract  each  month  for  less  cost  than 
the  mailing  and  postage  alone  of  a  circular  mailed  in  N.  Y. 

I  had  a  great  scheme  for  a  charity  publishing  house  of  won¬ 
derful  value  which  should  issue  the  Reporter  in  its  then  Chicago 
form  and  get  out  special  editions  for  societies  in  other  cities 
without  any  expense  to  them  giving  them  each  one  page  for  local 
matter.  It  looked  like  a  great  opportunity  for  an  enterprising 
man  with  a  taste  for  editing  and  publishing  and  a  talent  for 
advertising. 

Politics  and  Relief 

The  governing  body  of  Cook  County  was  a  board  of  fifteen 
commissioners.  In  1887  a  majority  of  this  board  led  by  the 
warden  of  the  county  hospital  who  was  a  ruthless  politician 
and  a  man  of  extraordinary  ability;  had  formed  a  conspiracy  to 
loot  the  county.  By  various  adroit  schemes  before  they  were 
defeated  they  stole  an  enormous  amount  of  the  public  funds. 

The  seven  honest  members  by  a  promise  of  immunity,  won 
over  one  of  the  weaker  of  the  corrupt  majority  to  their  side; 
and  then  arranged  a  prosecution  of  the  other  seven;  which  how¬ 
ever  was  only  successful  because  the  chairman  of  the  board  was 
induced  by  a  promise  of  a  light  sentence  to  act,  secretly,  in 
collusion  with  the  prosecuting  attorney  in  the  selection  of  the 


Fresh-Air  for  Children 


71 


jury.  The  conspirators  were  sent  to  the  penitentiary  the  chair¬ 
man  for  a  short  term.  The  warden  after  being  arrested  escaped 
to  Canada  in  a  spectacular  manner. 

While  the  fight  was  on  but  before  the  prosecution  began  the 
spoilers,  in  order  to  embarrass  the  reformers,  closed  up  the  county 
agent’s  office  so  cutting  off  the  outdoor  relief.  In  this  emergency 
the  reforming  minority  asked  the  Relief  and  Aid  Society  to  help 
them  by  at  least  receiving  applications  and  investigating  cases. 
When  the  old  society  refused  they  came  to  us ;  and  of  course  we 
cheerfully  undertook  the  work.  A  small  relief  committee  of  the 
county  board  acted  on  our  reports  and  managed  to  keep  things 
going.  The  county  agent’s  office  was  soon  reopened  but  the 
affairs  were  in  much  confusion  and  for  some  months  an  applica¬ 
tion  for  county  aid  made  to  the  C.  O.  S.  received  attention  by 
the  county  agent  one  or  two  weeks  earlier  than  if  it  had  been 
made  at  his  office  directly. 

At  the  time  of  the  trouble  I  thought  I  saw  an  opportunity 
for  the  C.  O.  S.  to  bring  about  a  great  reform.  The  outdoor 
relief  had  been  notoriously  abused;  it  had  been  made  into  little 
more  than  a  system  of  vote  buying;  it  was  a  common  saying 
among  the  henchmen  that  a  ton  of  coal  before  election  ought  to 
be  good  for  at  least  one  vote.  I  urged  the  executive  committee 
to  propose  to  the  reformed  county  board  that  they  give  up  the 
system  entirely,  as  had  been  done  in  Brooklyn  in  1879  and  in 
Philadelphia  in  1882,  and  that  the  C.  O.  S.  take  the  whole  respon¬ 
sibility  for  relief  of  the  poor.  I  believed  that  if  this  could  be 
done,  the  Relief  and  Aid  might  have  been  either  forced  into  co¬ 
operation  ;  or  put  so  emphatically  on  record  as  inutile  and  obso¬ 
lete  that  some  other  method  might  have  superseded  it;  and  the 
result  might  have  been  a  vast  saving  of  money  and  a  still  more 
valuable  saving  of  pauperism  and  of  political  corruption.  But 
the  C.  O.  S.  committee  altho  they  assented  to  my  theories  either 
doubted  my  ability  to  carry  them  out  or  lacked  the  courage 
necessary  to  assume  so  heavy  a  responsibility  and  a  great  oppor¬ 
tunity  was  lost.  '  ’ 

Fresh  Air  for  the  Children 

In  the  summer  of  1887  I  had  another  opportunity  to  start 
some  health  work  for  children.  The  story  of  fresh-air  work  in 


72 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


Chicago  is  just  as  interesting  as  was  that  in  Cincinnati  and  it 
had  an  even  more  spectacular  beginning.  The  Daily  News  was 
the  most  popular  paper  in  the  city.  The  proprietors  made  a 
standing  offer  of  a  liberal  bonus  to  any  one  of  the  staff  who 
should  devise  a  good  advertising  stunt  to  promote  circulation. 
Dr.  Reilly  was  an  editorial  writer  and  also  assistant  city  health 
officer,  and  planned  a  campaign  for  the  health  of  children.  He 
wrote  to  every  physician  asking  an  opinion  on  the  cause  of  the 
excessive  infant  mortality  during  the  summer.  In  reply  he  got 
many  hundred  letters  which  were  printed  on  page  after  page 
of  the  paper.  One  was  from  Dr.  Odelia  Blinn,  a  woman  doctor  of 
prominence,  who  said  that  the  great  need  of  Chicago’s  tenement 
children  was  some  fresh-air-work  like  that  of  the  N.  Y.  Tribune 
Fresh  Air  Fund,  and  suggested  that  the  C.  O.  S.  ought  to  under¬ 
take  it. 

This  gave  me  an  opportunity  of  the  kind  for  which  I  was 
always  on  the  watch.  I  wrote  the  paper  endorsing  Dr.  Blinn’s 
opinion,  regretting  that  the  C.  O.  S.  had  almost  more  than  it 
could  do  to  finance  itself;  but  that  if  the  News  would  create  a 
fund,  the  agents  of  the  C.  O.  S.  who  in  summer  were  not  so  busy 
as  in  winter  would  gladly  undertake  the  administration  without 
charge. 

In  a  few  days  the  “Daily  News  Fresh  Air  Fund”  was 
announced,  headed  by  a  substantial  sum  from  the  paper  and  in  a 
week  it  reached  $2,000  and  nothing  had  been  done.  Then  I  went 
to  Reilly  and  told  him  it  was  up  to  him  to  get  busy  that  money 
would  come  easily  if  there  was  something  doing  but  otherwise 
the  stream  would  soon  run  dry.  When  he  asked  for  a  suggestion, 
I  told  him  the  story  of  the  Cincinnati  work.  Reilly  and  I  called 
on  Melville  Stone,  the  manager  who  authorized  us  to  go  ahead 
giving  us  carte  blanche  as  to  work  and  money. 

I  made  a  tour  among  the  farmers  round  Highland  Park,  where 
I  lived,  hoping  to  find  boarding  places  as  I  had  done  near  Cin¬ 
cinnati  but  it  was  an  utter  failure.  Then  I  proposed  a  camp  on 
the  lake  bluff  at  Highwood,  now  the  Great  Lakes  Naval  Station. 
Reilly  suggested  the  use  of  some  big  empty  houses  at  Highwood 
which  had  been  begun  by  a  wild  real-estate  speculator  but  never 
finished,  the  property  being  mortgaged  to  the  N.  Y.  Equitable 
Insurance  Co. 


Fresh-Air  for  Children 


73 


The  agents  of  the  insurance  company  cheerfully  gave  the  use 
of  a  large  house  and  five  acres  of  heavily  wooded  land  on  the 
R.  R.  about  two  miles  north  of  Highland  Park.  The  house  was 
a  mere  shell,  without  kitchen  or  water  supply;  the  big  porch- 
floor  rotten,  the  roof  leaky.  But  it  was  well  situated,  had  a  fine 
front  and  a  high  cupola. 

A  force  of  men  were  set  at  work,  the  porch  repaired,  a  tem¬ 
porary  kitchen  built  in  the  basement,  a  water  tank  planted  and 
a  daily  supply  arranged  for  from  the  excellent  artesian  well  at 
Highland  Park.  The  grounds  were  cleared  of  brush,  three  vistas 
cut  thru  the  trees  giving  on  the  house  from  the  R.  R.  so  that 
passengers  on  the  frequent  trains  from  and  to  Milwaukee  could 
see  it.  From  the  cupola  a  big  burgee  floated  with  the  name 
“Castle  Content”;  along  the  fence  by  the  railway  a  muslin  sign 
100  feet  long  carried  the  legend  “Daily  News  Fresh  Air  Fund”. 
The  paper  got  its  advertising  all  right  but  it  deserved  it. 

The  season  was  advanced  when  we  began  and  we  had  to  hurry 
to  make  good  that  summer  but  just  one  week  from  the  day  we 
took  over  the  property  there  were  forty  mothers  and  children  on 
the  ground.  Later  a  floor  was  laid  in  the  third  story  making  a 
dormitory  for  twenty  boys  tents  were  pitched  on  the  lawn;  the 
final  capacity  was  eighty-eight  guests  and  once  there  were  more 
than  a  hundred  on  the  grounds  over  night. 

A  good  matron  was  installed ;  one  of  the  guests  a  mother  with 
five  children  lived  in  one  of  the  tents  and  did  the  cooking.  The 
children  were  selected  by  the  C.  O.  S.  agents  and  some  other 
societies.  Each  boy  and  girl  was  given  a  straw  hat  and  they  were 
taught  when  a  train  was  approaching  to  run  to  the  fence  climb 
on  it  wave  their  hats  and  yell  as  it  went  by.  The  R.  R.  carried 
the  guests  free  an  accommodation  train  each  way  stopped  once 
a  day  at  the  camp.  The  newspaper  having  fathered  the  plan 
featured  it  to  the  limit. 

A  rainy  spell  came  and  the  roof  was  patched  with  tar  paper; 
some  of  the  mothers  resented  being  invited  to  do  a  little  house¬ 
work;  wash  tubs  had  to  serve  for  bathing;  there  was  some 
trouble  with  the  milk  supply;  other  little  worries  came  but  on 
the  whole  it  was  a  good  time  for  all. 

The  cost  seemed  excessive  for  those  days,  over  $3.50  per  week 
per  guest;  the  milk  supply  alone  cost  half  as  much  per  head 


74 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


as  the  complete  board  that  had  been  paid  by  the  Cincinnati  fund. 
You  cannot  work  at  high  pressure  in  a  big  hurry  and  economize 
at  the  same  time.  But  no  one  grudged  the  expense  the  managers 
*  of  the  News  said  do  the  work  and  we  will  foot  the  bills,  and  they 
did. 

The  next  year  the  work  was  started  in  good  time  and  efforts 
were  made  to  secure  free  country  places  with  good  success. 
Castle  Content  had  been  an  emergency  operation  and  it  was  not 
repeated;  it  had  served  its  purpose  as  a  makeshift  and  was  a 
great  success  considering  the  rush  that  was  necessary.  But  in 
the  life  of  a  big  camp  there  are  too  many  together  and  the  camp¬ 
ers  miss  the  contact  with  the  life  of  the  country  folks  which  is 
a  valuable  by-product  of  fresh-air  work.  I  used  to  imagine 
indeed  that  it  might  encourage  at  least  to  a  small  extent  that 
return  to  the  land  which  seems  so  desirable ;  so  many  city  dwell¬ 
ers  dread  the  country  that  to  make  many  thousands  of  children 
love  it  seems  well  worth  while. 

The  Y.  W.  C.  T.  U.  under  Mary  Allen  West  of  blessed  mem¬ 
ory  and  her  faithful  junior,  Anna  Gordon  co-operated  and  thru 
the  Union  Signal  worked  up  interest  among  the  Y.  W.’s  in  some 
of  the  neighboring  small  towns,  chiefly  in  Wisconsin  which  has 
many  picturesque  resorts  by  lake  and  river.  Many  hundreds  of 
children  had  each  a  week  or  two  of  country  life.  Most  of  those 
we  sent  out  were  good  cases  tho  there  were  a  few  discomfiting 
experiences.  In  spite  of  the  medical  examination  which  we  gave 
all  the  guests  one  little  girl  carried  measles  to  a  country  family. 
Some  tough  boys  very  ill  selected  by  a  weak  agent  refused  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  people  who  met  them  at  the  station  and 
after  a  display  of  rowdyism  in  the  street  of  the  little  village, 
beat  their  way  back  to  Chicago  on  the  next  train. 

But  many  pleasant  incidents  gladdened  the  workers.  Some 
little  mites  who  went  rather  ill  clad  came  home  with  quite  a 
wardrobe.  One  small  boy  made  such  a  hit  with  his  host  a  wealthy 
farmer  that  he  not  only  kept  him  as  a  permanent  member  of  his 
home  but  also  took  his  widowed  mother  and  little  sister  into  the 
family  circle.  Many  children  made  lasting  friendships  and  were 
invited  to  come  again  next  year  and  stay  all  summer. 

The  summer  outings  became  a  regular  part  of  the  social  wel¬ 
fare  program  in  Chicago,  passing  in  the  course  of  years  from  the 


The  Appeal  for  Funds 


75 


control  of  the  Daily  News  to  that  of  the  United  Charities  and 
they  still  persist. 

The  General  Mail  Appeal  for  Funds 

By  October  1888,  it  really  appeared  to  me  that  I  had  found 
my  place  in  the  world  and  was  making  a  success  of  life.  The 
struggle  had  been  intense.  I  had  taken  risks  and  incurred  obli¬ 
gations  at  which  I  look  back  in  my  old  age  almost  with  dismay. 
Some  of  the  risks  perhaps  ought  not  to  have  been  run,  but,  by 
good  luck  or  good  guidance  dangers  had  been  overcome  or  evaded 
and  what  people  don’t  know  does  not  hurt  them.  As  is  usual 
with  an  attractive  and  well  advertised  agency,  the  intake  of  work 
increased  more  rapidly  than  the  funds  to  support  it  and  the 
deficit  mounted  month  by  month.  My  burden  of  work  and 
anxiety  during  the  Spring  and  Summer  had  brought  on  an  attack 
of  nervous  asthma  which  had  almost  prostrated  me.  But  the 
success  of  the  first  general  mail  appeal  was  so  immediate  and 
positive  that  things  looked  brighter  than  ever  and  the  nervous 
asthma  disappeared. 

The  financial  test  is  a  crude  one  as  to  quality  of  work  but  it 
is  positive  as  to  stability.  The  appeal  gave  the  test  and  demon¬ 
strated  the  financial  soundness  of  the  undertaking.  It  was  the 
end  of  our  fiscal  year  the  ledger  showed  a  deficit  of  $1150.00,  the 
current  charges  had  grown  to  about  $1100.00  per  month.  The 
annual  meeting  was  held  on  October  12th  and  its  proceedings 
and  the  society’s  affairs  were  well  reported  in  next  morning’s 
papers.  The  same  night  a  circular  appeal  for  funds  was  mailed 
to  every  subscriber  of  the  past  or  any  previous  year  and  also  to  a 
list  of  “givers”  of  the  city  the  names  taken  from  a  card  catalog 
compiled  from  all  available  annual  reports  of  charitable  agencies. 
Tt  included  every  one  whose  name  appeared  in  two  reports  and 
all  who  had  given  $5.00  or  more  to  any  one  agency.  My  theory 
in  compiling  this  list  was  that  the  people  who  have  given  will 
give,  I  admired  their  habit  and  wanted  to  encourage  it.  With 
the  appeal  was  sent  a  terse  statement  of  work  accomplished  and 
of  our  program  for  the  future.  By  Nov.  1st,  just  twenty  days 
after  the  printed  appeal  was  mailed,  money  enough  had  been 
received  to  cover  the  deficit  and  pay  the  bills  for  October  and 


76 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


November,  and  this  without  any  personal  solicitation.  I  and 
most  of  the  executive  committee  felt  that  the  society  had  arrived. 

An  Adventure  in  Charity  Trusts 

During  the  extremely  trying  summer  of  1888,  another  momen¬ 
tous  event  for  the  C.  O.  S.  was  brewing.  It  was  the  dawn  of  the 
great  period  of  trusts  and  combines.  Two  young  business  men  of 
the  best  type,  one  a  director  of  the  C.  O.  S.  the  other  of  the 
Relief  and  Aid,  who  were  close  friends  and  next  door  neighbors 
spent  a  Sunday  afternoon  discussing  the  two  societies.  Neither 
of  them  had  been  concerned  with  the  early  conflicts  and  were 
unconscious  of  any  reason  for  animosity.  They  asked  themselves 
why  there  should  be  two  competing  benevolent  agencies  in  the 
same  city,  why  there  might  not  be  a  “charity  trust’’.  This  was 
long  before  that  term  became  one  of  opprobrium  before  even  the 
word  “trust”  had  gathered  its  unsavory  meaning. 

On  the  Monday  following  my  director  called  on  me  for  a 
statement  of  the  differences  and  agreements  between  the  societies ; 
and  the  next  Sunday  afternoon  was  spent  discussing  it.  Unfor¬ 
tunately  as  it  turned  out  the  director  of  the  Relief  and  Aid  did 
not  call  on  the  executive  of  that  society  for  his  views  about  it. 
After  much  discussion  during  which  I  was  called  on  for  opinions 
and  for  facts  they  decided  that  a  combination  was  feasible  that 
it  would  reduce  overhead  and  facilitate  the  work.  I  agreed  with 
them  with  the  proviso  that  the  terms  of  a  union  must  be  very 
carefully  made  or  there  would  be  grave  danger  to  our  side  of  the 
undertaking. 

Then  several  meetings  of  groups  of  directors  were  held  includ¬ 
ing  a  dinner  at  the  club  where  the  best  of  harmony  prevailed. 
One  circumstance  of  sinister  import  was  not  recognized  until  too 
late;  that  none  of  the  three  members  of  the  executive  committee, 
the  real  rulers  of  the  Relief  and  Aid  society,  took  any  part  in 
the  negotiations.  There  was  one  exception  to  this,  the  third  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  triumvirate  did  interview  one  of  my  directors  to  tell 
him  that  their  hold  on  their  executive  agent  was  light,  that  he 
was  getting  old  and  had  talked  resignation,  that  they  felt  they 
must  soon  find  his  successor,  that  they  had  been  watching  me 
with  the  idea  that  I  might  be  the  man  they  wanted.  This  of 


A  Charity  Trust 


77 


course  made  that  director  favorable  to  the  combine  and  he  took 
care  to  repeat  the  conversation  to  me  and  suggest  the  wisdom 
of  consenting  to  take  second  place  for  a  while  in  the  hope  that 
excellent  work  might  be  done  later  when  I  should  become  chief. 

After  full  and  prolonged  discussion  a  contract  of  union  was 
drawn  up  which  provided  for  the  continuance  of  the  distinctive 
Vork  of  each  society  but  naturally  gave  first  place  to  the  older 
and  richer  one.  Seven  members  of  the  Relief  and  Aid  Board  were 
to  be  replaced  by  as  many  from  the  C.  O.  S.  Mr  Trusdell  was 
to  remain  superintendent,  my  title  was  to  be  assistant  superin¬ 
tendent.  There  were  to  be  two  executive  committees  of  equal 
dignity,  one  called  “Relief  Committee”  with  Trusdell  as  secretary, 
the  other  called  “Associated  Charities  Committee”  with  myself 
at  the  helm.  Our  C.  O.  S.  work  was  hedged  about  with  all  the 
safeguards  which  seemed  possible.  If  ever  a  treaty  could  be 
more  than  a  scrap  of  paper  this  seemed  one,  altho  like  most 
treaties  of  peace  it  carried  the  seeds  of  future  war. 

I  did  not  expect  a  quiet  career  under  the  new  deal;  in  fact 
I  must  confess  that  I  looked  forward  to  a  pretty  serious  conflict 
prolonged  over  several  years;  but  I  did  expect  a  fair  chance  to 
fight.  My  opponent  was  old  and  mentally  rigid  I  felt  that  I 
belonged  to  a  newer  generation  with  a  forward  outlook.  I  had 
met  Trusdell  at  the  National  Conference  and  had  sized  him  up 
as  an  easy  opponent.  His  opinion  of  me  I  gathered  when  after 
the  directors  of  the  combined  societies  had  voted  unanimously  to 
have  me  appear  before  them  and  explain  the  new  department 
they  had  undertaken  he  offered  his  resignation  rather  than  meet 
me  his  subordinate  before  them. 

The  subsequent  history  was  brief  and  tragic.  It  repeated  the 
story  of  many  business  combines  when  a  troublesome  competitor 
is  taken  in  out  of  the  cold  by  an  old  concern  which  does  not 
admire  modern  methods.  The  old  triumvirate  which  had  care¬ 
fully  abstained  from  any  share  in  making  the  treaty  was  still 
supreme.  The  board  refused  to  receive  the  superintendent’s 
proffered  resignation  and  never  listened  to  any  explanation  of 
the  new  undertaking.  The  new  executive  committees  were  not 
permitted  to  meet  even  once.  The  seven  C.  O.  S.  directors  who 
had  been  taken  into  the  joint  board  supinely  yielded  and  left  the 
necessary  fighting  to  me  who  was  tied  hand  and  foot. 


78 


Charity  Organization  in  Chicago 


In  the  course  of  a  few  months  one  distinctive  C.  O.  S.  feature 
after  another  was  first  spoiled  and  then  dropped.  The  woodyard 
policy  was  changed  so  that  it  soon  ceased  to  pay  its  own  way. 
The  Reporter  was  ordered  discontinued  my  investment  in  it  sim¬ 
ply  disregarded;  the  new-old  society  had  no  use  for  publicity. 
The  C.  O.  S.  which  had  demonstrated  its  vigorous  life  was  killed. 

There  was  nothing  for  me  to  do  but  to  establish  as  comfortable 
a  locus  as  possible  and  take  things  easily  while  waiting  for  the 
next  turn  of  Fortune’s  wheel  which  happened  to  be  not  TrusdelPs 
death  or  resignation,  but  a  substantial  advance  for  me ;  a  call  to 
be  the  first  secretary  of  the  newly  created  Board  of  State  Chari¬ 
ties  of  Indiana. 

This  ended  my  official  connection  with  organized  charity; 
altho  some  years  later  I  helped  establish  the  A.  C.  of  Fort  Wayne 
and  served  for  a  few  years  on  its  executive  committee. 

Charity  organization  disappeared  from  Chicago  for  a  few 
years.  It  reappeared  in  1896,  with  the  inception  of  the  United 
Charities.  The  next  year  Ernest  P.  Bicknell  became  its  secretary 
the  Relief  and  Aid  still  hostile.  Finally  Trusdell  died.  The  new 
United  Charities  had  as  far  outstripped  the  old  Relief  Society 
as  C.  O.  S.  had  bidden  fair  to  do  nine  years  earlier.  Some  new 
blood  in  the  old  society  demanded  a  change  and  Sherman  Kings¬ 
ley,  a  thorogoing,  well-trained  social  worker  was  made  super¬ 
intendent. 

A  few  months  later  a  second  amalgamation  was  effected  this 
time  on  more  favorable  terms  or  by  less  treacherous  people; 
Bicknell  being  advanced  to  a  leading  position  in  the  Red  Cross  in 
which  he  has  gained  high  honor  Kingsley  became  general  secre¬ 
tary.  Since  then  the  Chicago  United  Charities  has  taken  the 
place  in  the  social  councils  of  the  Nation  which  is  appropriate 
for  an  organization  of  that  city  and  the  old  Relief  and  Aid  society 
is  forgotten. 


ADVENTURES  IN  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

PART  TWO 

ADVENTURES  IN  INSPECTION  AND 

SUPERVISION 


79 


ADVENTURES  IN  INSPECTION  AND  SUPERVISION 


Chapter  One 

BEGINNING  THE  ADVENTURES 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati, 
Oscar  Carlton  McCulloch,  Pastor  of  Plymouth  Church,  Indian¬ 
apolis,  who  was  also  president  of  the  Benevolent  Society  and 
unpaid  secretary  of  the  C.  O.  S.  was  a  helpful  friend  and  adviser. 
He  was  specially  interested  in  the  big  flood  relief  of  1884,  and 
at  the  next  annual  charity  meeting  in  Indianapolis,  which  occurs 
every  year  on  the  Sunday  nearest  Thanksgiving,  he  invited  me 
to  tell  the  big  audience,  in  ten  minutes,  all  about  the  flood. 

Three  and  a  half  years  later  when  I  was  waiting  in  Chicago 
for  something  to  happen  following  the  disastrous  swallowing  of 
the  C.  O.  S.  by  the  Relief  and  Aid  Society,  I  got  a  letter  from 
Mr.  McCulloch  asking  me  to  come  to  Indiana  to  be  the  secretary 
of  the  newly  created  Board  of  State  Charities.  I  promptly 
replied  that  I  would  not  even  consider  such  a  risky  proposition. 
To  come  from  Illinois  to  a  state  position  in  Indiana,  the  state 
with  more  politics  to  the  square  mile  than  any  other  in  the  Union, 
seemed  quite  out  of  the  question.  I  had  made  some  rash  moves 
in  my  career  but  this  seemed  not  merely  rash  but  foolhardy. 

Mr.  McCulloch  answered  that  it  was  not  so  rash  as  it  looked. 
He  assured  me  that  Indiana  was  a  hospitable  state  to  new  men 
and  new  ideas;  that  altho  up  to  that  time  inviting  men  of  special 
ability  from  outside  a  state  to  a  public  office  was  hardly  heard 
of  things  were  changing  and  would  change  more.  He  added  that 
as  I  had  not  heard  him  preach  lately  and  had  not  visited  him 
for  three  years  I  might  run  down  for  a  week-end  and  talk  it 
over.  There  seemed  no  danger  in  this  Indianapolis  was  only 
four  hours  away  and  I  consented. 

When  I  packed  my  grip  I  slipped  into  it  the  volume  of  pro¬ 
ceedings  of  the  National  Conference  for  1887,  in  which  there  was 


(81) 


82 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


an  elaborate  report  and  one  or  two  good  papers  on  state  boards ; 
with  a  rather  full  discussion.  On  the  train  I  read  the  proceed¬ 
ings.  When  I  went  to  my  room  I  read  until  midnight  and  began 
again  at  day-break. 

After  the  sermon  at  church  and  dinner  two  members  of  the 
new  board  who  lived  in  Indianapolis,  E.  B.  Martindale  a  repub¬ 
lican  member  and  John  R.  Elder  a  democrat  came  to  the  Big  Elm, 
Mr.  McCulloch’s  house  on  Pennsylvania  street  for  a  confab.  They 
talked  state  board  for  several  hours;  said  it  was  to  be  strictly 
out  of  politics ;  that  the  people  were  ready  to  be  led  in  the  right 
way ;  that  there  was  a  wave  of  social  reform  going  over  the  state 
as  shown  by  the  legislative  session  of  that  year  when  the  Board 
of  State  Charities,  the  Board  of  Children’s  Guardians,  the  Aus¬ 
tralian  ballot,  and  several  other  reform  laws  had  been  enacted, 
particularly  one  which  meant  a  real  merit  system  in  the  state’s 
benevolent  institutions* ;  that  so  far  from  it  being  a  disadvantage 
to  a  secretary  to  have  come  from  another  state  it  was  desirable 
because  he  would  have  no  entangling  political  alliances  to  hamper 
him. 

On  the  whole  the  situation  looked  rather  favorable  and  I 
agreed  to  stay  over  Monday  and  attend  the  first  board  meeting 
in  the  Governor’s  office.  After  the  evening  church  service  I 
studied  the  Conference  proceedings  until  the  small  hours. 

Next  day  the  meeting  convened  at  ten  o’clock  and  the  members 
were  sworn  in.  Then  I  was  asked  to  wait  in  the  outer  office 
while  the  board  met  in  the  Governor’s  parlor.  Presently  I  was 
summoned  and  they  began  to  question  me.  I  told  them  I  under¬ 
stood  city  charity  work  and  outdoor  relief  fairly  well,  also  child¬ 
helping  in  its  various  forms,  including  reform  schools ;  but  about 
the  prisons  and  jails,  the  care  of  the  insane,  deaf,  blind  and  feeble¬ 
minded  I  had  all  to  learn.  They  seemed  to  approve  my  mental 
attitude. 

It  was  soon  evident  from  their  questions  that  only  two  of  the 
new  board  had  more  than  a  vague  notion  about  a  state  board’s 
work  and  even  their  knowledge  was  not  so  good  as  mine  had  been 
two  days  before.  But  as  I  had  been  reading  up  on  the  subject 

•Since  the  passage  of  that  bill  there  has  never  been  a  case  of  the 
removal  of  a  superintendent  for  purely  political  reasons.  There  have  been 
a  few  removals  not  always  for  creditable  reasons  but  none  for  politics. 


Beginning  the  Adventures 


83 


every  spare  minute  for  the  past  forty-eight  hours  I  felt  able  to 
inform  them.  So  I  asked,  in  a  naive,  innocent  way,  whether  they 
were  familiar  with  how  such  boards  were  organized  and  what 
they  had  accomplished  in  other  states.  They  said  they  wkre  not. 
I  asked  whether  they  would  like  to  hear  about  it  and  of  course 
they  said  by  all  means.  So  I  spoke  about  twenty  minutes  recount¬ 
ing  the  history  of  the  different  kinds  of  organization  in  different 
states  beginning  with  Mass,  in  1863,  and  sketched  the  possibilities 
of  a  purely  advisory  and  inspectorial  board  such  as  the  new 
Indiana  law  contemplated. 

Then  they  asked  me  if  I  had  studied  their  new  law  and  if  so 
whether  it  was  a  good  one.  As  I  had  read  it  a  few  minutes  before 
while  waiting  in  the  outer  office  I  was  able  to  tell  them  that  it 
was  like  the  excellent  Ohio  law  with  only  one  difference  and  that 
was  an  improvement. 

Somehow  they  did  not  ask  me  what  the  difference  was;  it  was 
in  a  clause  which  in  the  Ohio  law  limited  the  secretary’s  salary 
to  |1200  per  annum;  the  Indiana  law  allowing  the  salary  to  be 
determined  by  the  Board. 

Then  the  Governor  asked  me  to  withdraw  but  I  told  him  that 
so  far  I  was  not  an  applicant  for  the  position  and  would  like  to 
ask  a  few  questions  myself.  On  receiving  permission  I  asked 
whether  the  Board  intended  to  follow  the  example  of  that  of  Illi¬ 
nois  or  of  that  of  Wisconsin ;  the  members  of  the  first  named  being 
little  but  figure-heads  contenting  themselves  with  choosing  a 
secretary  and  letting  him  do  all  the  work;  those  of  the  latter 
taking  active  part  using  the  secretary  as  their  official  hand  and 
eye.  Of  course  they  declared  for  the  Wisconsin  plan  and  I 
announced  mvself  as  a  candidate  and  withdrew.  There  were  two 
other  people  considered  one  of  them  being  Ernest  P.  Bicknell 
who  was  my  choice  when  four  years  later  I  was  asked  to  nominate 
my  successor;  altho  I  did  not  know  when  I  named  him  nor  for 
many  years  afterwards  that  he  had  been  my  competitor  at  the 
first  meeting.  I  was  elected  and  took  possession  of  the  office  a 
few  days  later. 

After  the  meeting  was  over  Mr.  McCulloch  told  me  he  had 
been  working  for  a  state  board  for  seven  years  and  for  four  of 
them  he  had  had  me  in  mind  for  its  secretary. 

Then  began  one  of  the  most  interesting  most  useful  and  in 


84 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


many  respects  most  successful  adventures  of  my  life.  It  was  a 
marvellous  opportunity.  The  work  was  all  new  to  the  state 
there  were  no  precedents  to  hamper  me.  The  law  was  rather 
vague.  The  duties  of  the  board  were  defined  in  the  most  general 
terms;  it  was  evident  they  might  do  anything  that  was  right  so 
long  as  they  carried  public  opinion  with  them. 

The  board  was  to  be  non-partisan.  It  really  was  bi-partisan 
as  to  its  members,  three  from  each  of  the  two  leading  parties. 
The  Governor  was  ex-officio  president  and  he  was  a  determined 
partisan  but  during  my  term  of  office  he  only  attended  one  meet¬ 
ing.  Two  of  the  members  were  women,  Mrs.  C.  W.  Fairbanks 
whose  husband  was  afterwards  vice-president  of  the  U.  S.  and 
Mrs.  W.  F.  Peelle  a  well  known  and  active  social  worker. 

The  men  democratic  members  were  John  R.  Elder  and  Oscar 
Carlton  McCulloch.  Mr.  Elder  was  a  democrat  of  the  old  school 
tho  he  had  never  been  a  bitter  partisan.  He  was  at  one  time 
owner  of  the  Indianapolis  Sentinel  and  during  the  civil  war  his 
newspaper  office  had  been  wrecked  and  he  had  had  a  narrow 
escape  from  the  violence  of  an  anti-Copperhead  mob.  Mr.  McCul¬ 
loch  was  the  leader  in  the  city  and  state  in  every  kind  of  social 
welfare  work.  He  was  a  man  of  wonderful  character,  a  great 
leader,  one  who  never  said  “Go”  but  always  “Come”.  His  all  too 
early  death  in  1891,  was  an  almost  irreparable  loss  to  the  Board 
as  well  as  to  the  public. 

The  republican  members  were  E.  B.  Martindale  and  Timothy 
Nicholson.  Mr.  Martindale  was  a  former  newspaper  man  once 
owner  of  the  Indianapolis  Journal;  he  was  the  most  partisan 
of  any  of  the  Board.  He  resigned  after  a  few  months  to  accept 
a  state  position  which  carried  a  salary;  the  Board  of  State 
Charities  was  unpaid  only  their  necessary  traveling  expenses 
being  defrayed.  Timothy  Nicholson  was  a  well  known  Quaker 
from  Richmond,  who  had  been  the  leader  among  his  people  in 
all  kinds  of  civic  and  social  betterment  for  many  years;  a  man 
of  unbounded  courage,  deep  sympathy  and  inflexible  honesty 
both  of  thought  and  act ;  as  faithful  and  wise  a  friend  as  ever  a 
man  had.  He  served  on  the  board  for  nineteen  years  and  is  still 
living  in  dignified  retirement. 

McCulloch  and  Nicholson  were  the  influential  members  of 
the  Board,  the  others,  except  Mr.  Martindale,  heartily  following 


Beginning  the  Adventures 


85 


their  lead.  And  they  soon  showed  the  utmost  confidence  in 
their  secretary,  not  only  in  his  industry,  honesty  and  good  inten¬ 
tions  but  also  in  his  judgment  and  common  sense. 

I  was  pretty  well  known  to  social  welfare  people  thru  my 
connection  with  the  National  Conference  and  soon  after  my  elec¬ 
tion  I  received  several  letters  of  advice  from  candid  friends.  The 
State  Board  of  Indiana  was  new  and  the  wise  men  saw  a  chance 
to  make  their  wisdom  useful  to  the  ignorant  board  and  its  raw 
young  secretary.  Hastings  Hart  then  secretary  of  the  Minne¬ 
sota  state  board,  wrote  an  excellent  friendly  letter  of  advice 
welcoming  the  new  man  to  the  state  board  circle  and  predicting 
all  kinds  of  usefulness  for  him.  He  said  “Do  most  of  your  talk¬ 
ing  the  first  year,  you  will  never  know  so  much  again.”  Later 
he  was  of  invaluable  help  when  some  knotty  questions  came  up. 

Frederick  H.  Wines,  Secretary  of  the  Illinois  Board,  gave 
me  some  wise  advice  at  the  first  tho  later  some  of  his  counsels 
were  of  different  quality.  He  repeated  some  of  the  things  the 
Governor  of  his  state  had  told  him  when  he  began  as  a  new  and 
untrained  secretary.  One  was  the  maxim  that  the  people  of 
the  state  would  rather  hear  good  than  ill  of  their  institutions. 
Another  was  a  sage  remark  also  from  Gov.  Palmer,  “the  first 
consideration  of  a  public  man  is  to  be  and  do  right;  the  second 
and  almost  as  important,  is  to  seem  to  be  and  do  right”. 

John  H.  Findlay,  secretary  of  the  New  York  State  Charities 
Aid  Association  wrote  a  friendly  letter;  but  he  rather  regretted 
the  fact  that  I  had  left  the  field  of  voluntary  associations  where 
my  initiative  and  resource  could  be  valuable;  to  tie  myself  up 
in  a  mere  political  job  in  which  I  could  do  little  but  routine  work. 
He  thought  a  state  board  was  so  hampered  by  political  red  tape 
that  it  could  not  possibly  influence  the  state  institutions  for  the 
better,  as  a  non-political  society  like  his  own,  could  do  and  was 
doing. 

Dr.  Charles  S.  Hoyt,  secretary  of  the  N.  Y.  Board  of  State 
Charities,  wrote  congratulating  the  state  on  the  creation  of  the 
board  and  the  secretary  on  his  appointment.  He  advised  special 
attention  to  the  county  institutions  as  being  the  only  ones  that 
the  board  could  have  much  effect  upon.  He  said  “the  great 
state  institutions  are  too  big  game  for  you”.  Poor  old  Dr.  Hoyt 
had  always  had  a  hard  time  with  the  institutions  of  his  state 


86 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


with  whose  officials  he  was  very  unpopular.  He  had  begun  visit¬ 
ing  them  in  the  spirit  and  method  of  a  detective  and  during  his 
long  and  busy  life  he  never  acquired  the  fine  art  of  inspection. 
He  was  honest,  incorruptible,  a  faithful  and  energetic  servant  of 
his  state  according  to  his  lights ;  but  his  influence  was  never  what 
it  might  have  been  had  his  theories  of  supervision  and  inspection 
been  different. 

Oscar  McCulloch  in  asking  about  a  new  man  in  social  work, 
used  to  say,  “has  he  the  spiritual  touch  ?”  Nowhere  in  the  world 
is  it  more  true  than  in  social  work  that  “the  letter  killeth  the 
spirit  giveth  life”.  Dr.  Hoyt  not  having  the  spirit  himself  did 
not  look  for  it  in  others. 

I  valued  the  advice  of  Hart  and  Wines,  but  I  did  not  believe 
either  Findlay  or  Hoyt  and  experience  soon  proved  both  of  them 
to  have  been  mistaken.  No  record  of  any  voluntary  association 
for  governmental  reform  has  ever  equalled  that  of  the  Indiana 
Board  of  State  Charities.  And  the  attitude  of  the  institution 
men  whom  Hoyt  thought  it  was  useless  to  try  to  influence  may 
be  shown  by  an  incident  which  occurred  on  one  of  my  early  visits 
to  the  Central  Hospital  for  Insane.  Sitting  in  the  superintend¬ 
ent’s  office  after  a  tour  of  the  wards  with  him  the  doctor  threw 
a  bunch  of  keys  into  my  lap  saying  “those  are  yours,  if  you  lose 
them  a  new  bunch  will  cost  you  a  dollar”.  In  reply  to  the  ques¬ 
tion  “what  are  they?”  he  answered  “pass  keys  to  all  the  wards 
and  the  outer  doors.  Come  when  you  will  and  stay  as  long  as 
you  like,  you  are  as  free  on  the  wards  as  I  am.”  If  Dr.  Hoyt  had 
carried  such  a  bunch  of  keys  in  his  pocket  he  would  never  have 
needed  to  begin  his  inspection  at  the  back  door  of  an  institution 
at  five  o’clock  in  the  morning. 


Chapter  Two 


THE  BOARD  AND  ITS  METHODS 

Governor  Hovey  was  a  good-hearted,  honest  and  courageous 
man,  but  narrow-minded,  and  positive  to  obstinacy.  At  the  ses¬ 
sion  of  1889,  when  he  had  an  adverse  majority  in  the  legislature, 
he  vetoed  every  bill  that  was  passed,  good,  bad  and  indifferent 
and  every  one  was  promptly  passed  over  his  veto*  So  skilful 
had  been  the  last  democratic  gerrymander  that  altho  the  Gov¬ 
ernor  and  state  officers  elected  in  1888  were  Republicans,  the 
Democrats  had  a  majority  of  twenty-two  on  joint  ballot  of  the 
senate  of  fifty  and  the  house  of  one  hundred  members. 

On  the  whole  that  session  was  a  progressive  one  but  it  enacted 
one  reactionary  measure, — it  took  out  of  the  Governor’s  hands 
the  appointing  power  of  trustees  for  state  institutions  and  lodged 
it  in  the  legislature.  This  was  done  to  avert  a  complete  house¬ 
cleaning  by  the  Governor,  the  institutions  being  in  almost  exclu¬ 
sive  democratic  control.  The  Governor  could  not  forget  the 
power  he  had  hoped  to  wield  and  had  lost  nor  forgive  those  who 
took  it  away  from  him.  The  act  creating  the  board  was  among 
those  he  had  vetoed,  but  now  that  it  had  become  law  and  he  was 
president  he  thought  he  saw  in  it  a  weapon  he  could  use  on  his 
enemies.  He  said  to  me  “you  have  some  Augean  stables  to 
clean”.  Fortunately  for  the  board’s  usefulness  only  one  member 
was  in  sympathy  with  him.  Governor  Hovey  was  honest  in  his 
opinion  and  showed  it  by  the  quality  of  the  people  whom  he 
appointed  on  the  Board.  He  really  thought  those  whom  he  wished 
to  turn  out  were  rascals ;  and  the  acts  of  the  board  which  believed 
differently  were  a  great  disappointment  to  him. 

Until  1889  most  of  the  Governor’s  appointments  had  to  be 
confirmed  by  the  senate  so  the  boards  were  often  of  mixed  poli¬ 
tics.  Now  one  of  the  new  reform  laws  was  devised  to  make  the 
administrations  non-partisan  by  requiring  representation  of  both 

♦In  the  Indiana  Legislature  a  bare  majority  vote  will  override  the 
governor’s  veto. 


(87) 


/ 


88  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

parties  on  every  board.  This  did  not  lead  however,  to  non¬ 
partisan  but  rather  to  bi-partisan  control  which  may  be  quite 
another  thing.* 

Things  certainly  had  been  pretty  bad.  The  condition  of  the 
Central  Hospital  for  the  Insane  was  one  of  the  causes  of  Cleve¬ 
land’s  defeat  for  president  in  1888.  The  hospital  had  been  investi¬ 
gated  in  1887  and  the  seven  hundred  and  ninety  pages  of  testi¬ 
mony  had  disclosed  an  incredible  amount  of  fraud;  corruption; 
abuse  of  patients;  a  conspiracy  of  officers,  trustees  and  con¬ 
tractors  to  rob  the  state — and  the  party  that  was  in  control  was 
so  discredited  that  it  lost  the  next  election.  If  the  fifteen  votes 
of  Indiana  instead  of  going  to  Harrison  had  gone  to  Cleveland 
he  would  have  been  elected.  That  investigation  had  been  one 
of  the  causes  leading  to  the  creation  of  the  Board  of  State  Chari¬ 
ties. 

But  reform  was  working;  things  were  much  better  and  gain¬ 
ing  fast.  Non-partisan  management  of  the  state’s  benevolences 
had  been  a  plank  in  the  platform  of  both  parties  in  1888.  The 
more  astute  politicians  were  saying  “it’s  bad  politics  to  meddle 

with  the  benevolent  institutions”.  A  real  merit  svstem  altho 

•/ 

not  a  technically  “civil  service”  plan,  was  in  operation. 

There  were  two  hospitals  for  insane  and  two  more  had  been 
building  intermittently  for  five  years.  The  Northern  Hospital  at 
Logansport  had  for  superintendent  Dr.  Joseph  G.  Rogers;  one  of 
the  great  constructive  hospital  men  of  the  country  who  had  been 
in  charge  from  its  beginning  in  1883.  Its  management  had  Jbeen 
above  reproach,  no  breath  of  scandal  had  sullied  it. 

The  Central  Hospital  had  just  changed  hands  and  a  new  man 
chosen  solely  on  his  merits,  had  been  appointed  under  conditions 
which  gave  him  a  free  hand  and  he  was  laboring  hard  and  suc¬ 
cessfully  to  improve  the  administration.  To  talk  about  these 
hospitals  as  “Augean  stables”  was  an  absurd  anchronism.  That 
term  might  well  have  been  applied  to  the  Central  Hospital  in 
1887,  but  that  stable  had  been  flooded  out.  To  have  undertaken 

*In  1886,  a  Prussian  district  judge,  Dr.  Aschrott,  was  sent  by  his  gov¬ 
ernment  to  study  the  methods  of  institutional  and  charitable  relief  of  the 
U.  S.  I  entertained  him  in  Chicago  and  was  unable  to  make  him  under¬ 
stand  how  we  Americans  could  expect  to  get  non-partisan  administration 
by  appointing  partisans.  Aschrott  had  a  cold  logical  mind.  There  are 
many  things  about  America  which  a  German  cannot  understand,  as  was 
proved  by  what  happened  in  1916  and  1917. 


r 


The  Board  and  Its  Methods 


89 


inspection  in  Governor  Hovey's  frame  of  mind  would  have  done 
much  harm  and  no  possible  good. 

The  board  did  not  let  the  Governor  have  his  way  but  began 
a  policy  not  of  upheaval  and  turmoil  but  of  quiet  steady  influence. 
We  began  a  careful  study  of  the  institutions  visiting  them  fre¬ 
quently  and  intimately;  trying  to  convince  those  in  charge  that 
if  they  were  doing  right  the  board  could  be  of  use  to  them.  I 
went  to  them  not  as  a  preceptor  or  judge  but  as  a  sympathetic 
student.  I  realized  that  while  I  did  not  have  the  expert  knowl¬ 
edge  necessary  to  criticise  the  details  of  management  there  was 
something  more  important  than  detail,  the  spirit  behind  it. 
While  I  knew  myself  ignorant  of  much  of  the  machinery  I  thought 
I  could  recognize  the  temper  of  the  men  who  were  handling  it. 

The  method  of  inspection  and  correction  of  error  which  I  saw 
clearly  from  the  first  and  from  which  I  never  deviated,  was  what 
Mathew  Arnold  calls  the  method  of  “inwardness”.  If  I  found 
something  I  thought  was  wrong  I  talked  to  the  Superintendent, 
not  as  a  superior  officer,  which  I  was  not,  but  as  man  to  man.  If 
he  met  me  half  way  and  the  error  was  corrected  no  one  else  ever 
heard  about  my  influence  in  the  matter  not  even  my  own  Board 
members.  I  believed  that  a  reform  brought  about  in  that  way 
from  within,  was  a  real  one  while  a  new  procedure  forced  on 
an  official  by  pressure  from  without  and  not  really  appreciated 
by  those  who  must  practise  it  might  have  worse  results  than 
the  method  it  had  supplanted. 

I  early  recognized  the  vital  difference  between  inspection  and 
detection.  The  former  has  to  do  with  good  things  and  bad,  to 
commend  the  one  and  condemn  the  other;  the  latter  is  wholly 
concerned  to  find  something  wrong  and  expose  it.  My  work  was 
inspection  and  I  did  it. 

There  are  several  virtues  of  primary  value  in  institution 
employees,  such  as  industry,  sobriety,  promptness,  efficiency  and 
others.  But  there  is  one  pre-eminent  virtue  and  that  is  loyalty. 
When  an  inspector  says  things  to  a  subordinate  official  which 
foster  disloyalty  to  that  official's  chief,  he  is  guilty  of  a  grave 
social  crime.  An  instance  has  been  known  of  a  so-called  inspector 
who  had  only  the  detective  instinct,  asking  for  a  private  inter¬ 
view  with  an  employee  on  whose  face  he  fancied  he  saw  a  grouch, 
and  saying  to  him  “Mr.  Jones,  anything  you  say  to  me  will  be 


90  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

in  the  strictest  confidence  and  never  known  to  anyone  but  our¬ 
selves,  you  will  never  be  given  away.  Now  what  do  you  know 
about  this  institution  that  should  be  different?”  Such  action  is 
as  vicious  as  it  would  be  to  deliberately  undermine  the  founda¬ 
tions  of  the  institution  building. 

To  the  detective  mind  nothing  matters  except  to  prove  some¬ 
one  at  fault.  But  to  the  wise  inspector  the  question  of  whether 
some  person  did  or  did  not  commit  a  certain  act,  is  of  compara¬ 
tively  little  importance.  What  he  seeks  to  know  is  the  general 
and  habitual  trend  of  an  officer’s  motives,  intentions  and  actions. 

When  I  began  my  work  which  for  long  was  chiefly  the  inspec¬ 
tion  of  institutions,  I  was  conscious  of  ignorance,  eager  to  learn, 
with  a  passion  for  fairness  and  a  square  deal.  And  the  institu¬ 
tion  men  whom  I  visited  with  rare  exceptions,  believed  me  to  be 
sincere  and  became  my  friends.  I  was  fortunate  in  beginning 
at  a  time  when  reform  was  in  the  air.  There  was  a  general  pub¬ 
lic  opinion  in  the  state  that  things  institutional  had  been  bad 
but  that  we  were  united  in  making  them  better.  Much  of  the 
remarkable  success  of  the  early  years  of  the  Indiana  Board  of 
State  Charities  was  made  possible  because  of  this  healthy  state  of 
public  opinion. 

Very  early  in  my  work  with  institution  people  I  divined  the 
value  of  encouragement  and  praise.  An  old  friend,  James  Vila 
Blake,  told  me  “to  withhold  praise  from  one  to  whom  it  is  due 
is  as  dishonest  as  it  is  to  neglect  any  other  just  debt”.  I  had 
come  to  my  new  task  with  no  more  knowledge  of  public  officials 
than  the  ordinary  citizen ;  with  all  the  ordinary  citizen’s  distrust 
of  politics  and  people  with  political  jobs.  I  found  that  most  of 
the  public  servants  of  Indiana  both  those  of  the  state  and  the 
counties,  were  honestly  trying  to  do  their  work  as  well  as  they 
knew  how.  Sometimes  ignorant  of  many  things  they  ought  to 
have  known;  sometimes  making  serious  mistakes;  often  inade¬ 
quately  supplied  with  money  and  help;  often  poorly  paid;  but 
usually  responsive  to  human  contact;  sometimes  pathetically 
eager  for  advice;  almost  always  welcoming  an  understanding 
sympathy. 

When  it  came  to  making  public  reports  of  institutional  con¬ 
ditions,  I  always  began  if  possible  with  a  word  of  commendation 
of  things  praiseworthy;  and  it  was  rarely  the  case  that  there 


The  Board  and  Its  Methods 


91 


was  nothing  to  commend.  Then  when  it  came  to  mentioning 
errors  or  things  needing  improvement ;  so  far  as  it  could  properly 
be  done,  the  burden  was  laid  where  it  belonged;  it  might  be  on 
a  law  which  needed  amendment;  it  might  be  on  the  legislature 
whose  appropriations  had  been  inadequate;  it  might  be  on  the 
board  of  trustees  or  the  county  commissioners.  It  would  be  not 
only  cruel  but  aimless  to  blame  a  superintendent  or  his  employees 
for  things  about  which  they  were  helpless. 

Then  it  often  occurred  that  an  error  had  its  source  in  lack  of 
complete  co-operation  between  the  official  and  those  who  con¬ 
trolled  him.  Sometimes  a  governing  board  did  not  know  of 
some  need,  because  the  official  had  been  too  timid  to  make  it 
known.  Perhaps  he  had  assumed  incorrectly  that  his  board 
knew  the  facts  but  would  do  nothing,  being  themselves  especially 
if  a  county  board  afraid  of  the  taxpayers.  Occasionally  it  was 
possible  to  help  an  official  with  his  own  board ;  coming  from  the 
outside  I  could  speak  freely  to  them.  But  just  as  far  as  possible 
the  stories  of  errors  to  correct  were  kept  out  of  the  published 
reports  only  when  the  inward  method  failed  was  public  repro¬ 
bation  needed  and  that  was  seldom. 

The  new  Board  of  State  Charities  divided  itself  into  a  num¬ 
ber  of  committees;  on  prisons  and  criminal  affairs;  on  hospitals 
for  the  insane ;  on  schools  for  defectives ;  on  county  institutions. 
Each  state  institution  was  to  be  visited  annually  or  oftener  by 
the  full  board  or  the  appropriate  committee  and  quarterly  by  the 
secretary;  each  county  institution  to  be  visited  annually  or 
oftener  by  the  secretary.  As  there  were  ten  state  institutions 
in  1889  and  two  more  were  added  in  1890;  ninety-two  counties 
each  with  its  asylum  and  jail  and  forty-two  of  them  having 
county  orphan’s  homes  that  meant  lots  of  traveling  for  the  sec¬ 
retary. 

No  institution  needs  more  thoro  inspection  in  none  is  there 
more  danger  of  abuse  than  the  Hospital  for  the  Insane.  It  is 
necessary  to  give  those  in  charge  very  complete  control  over  the 
patients  for  their  own  good  and  the  protection  of  the  others. 
Now  it  is  an  axiom  that  no  man  is  good  enough  to  have  complete 
control  over  his  fellow  without  some  competent  oversight  and 
control  over  himself.  For  this  reason  and  because  of  the  serious 
scandals  of  recent  years  the  inspection  of  the  hospitals  was 
regarded  as  being  the  most  important. 


92  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

Early  in  our  work  I  induced  tlie  Board  to  pass  two  resolutions 
governing  its  conduct.  The  first  was  to  take  no  action  unless 
the  board  was  unanimous.  I  argued  that  our  value  is  in  convinc¬ 
ing  people  that  we  are  right, — that  what  we  suggest  is  for  the 
best  interest  of  the  state.  If  we  cannot  convince  our  own  mem¬ 
bers  how  can  we  expect  to  convince  others?  We  have  no  execu¬ 
tive  duties*  that  must  be  performed  at  a  specified  time  so  we 
can  always  wait  to  take  action  until  we  are  all  of  one  mind. 
Only  twice  in  the  history  of  the  board  during  my  term  of  office 
was  a  vote  taken  and  counted.  One  of  those  two  occasions  was 
at  the  meeting  attended  by  Governor  Hovey  when  he  did  his  best 
without  success  to  divide  the  board  on  partisan  lines.  Nothing 
was  ever  done  upon  which  the  members  were  not  unanimous.f 

♦This  freedom  from  executive  duties,  which  is  one  of  the  advantages  of 
a  Board  of  State  Charities,  strictly  so-called,  was  a  few  years  later  some¬ 
what  infringed  upon.  One  of  the  penalties  or  rewards  of  faithful  and  suc¬ 
cessful  work  is  being  given  additional  duties.  The  legislature  when 
attempting  some  new  department  of  work  which  requires  more  than  rou¬ 
tine  performance,  often  chooses  some  existing  board  in  which  the  public 
has  confidence  and  imposes  the  new  duties  upon  them  altho  they  may  not 
be  properly  cognate  to  their  work. 

fThe  question  of  the  relative  advantages  of  a  Board  of  State  Charities 
such  as  that  of  Indiana,  and  a  Board  of  Control  such  as  many  Western 
States  adopt,  has  frequently  been  raised  in  a  misleading  manner.  They  are 
not  comparable.  One  is  a  board  of  supervision  and  the  other  of  administra¬ 
tion.  One  does  not  attempt  to  administer,  the  other  certaimy  cannot 
exercise  supervision. 

There  may  be  a  question  as  to  the  relative  merits  from  a  business  point 
of  view,  of  a  centralized  Board  of  Control  for  all  institutions,  and  a  system 
of  a  separate  board  for  each  working  under  the  supervision  of  a  Board 
of  State  Charities ;  altho  the  observation  of  many  years  has  abundantly 
convinced  me  that  the  latter  method  is  as  good  or  better  for  the  business 
of  institution  management  and  immensely  better  for  the  work  of  the  insti¬ 
tutions.  But  there  can  be  no  question  about  the  fact  that  with  a  Board  of 
State  Charities  the  state  can  have  an  efficient  supervision  which  a  Board 
of  Control  cannot  possibly  supply ;  and  that  such  supervision  is  one  of  the 
most  important  functions  of  a  state  government. 

There  must  be  a  system  of  administration  and  there  must  in  a  well 
ordered  state  be  a  system  of  supervision.  It  is  as  important  to  have  such 
an  agency  in  government  as  in  business.  In  banking  we  must  have  state 
and  national  bank  examiners.  How  much  more  important  to  have  proper 
visitation  and  examination  of  institutions  which  exist  for  the  care  of 
human  beings.  And  an  administrative  agency  can  no  more  supervise  itself 
than  a  bank  can  examine  itself. 

There  is  a  further  function  which  a  Board  of  State  Charities  can 
exercise  and  in  which  many  such  boards,  notably  that  of  Indiana  have 
been  successful  but  which  a  Board  of  Control,  charged  with  vast  adminis¬ 
trative  duties  can  not  discharge;  that  is  to  inform  and  lead  the  public 
opinion  of  the  state,  in  forward  movements  of  social  work  both  public  and 
private.  It  has  been  asserted  that  a  Board  of  Control  ought  to  be  able  to 
do  this,  but  I  think  no  one  (or  hardly  anyone)  will  assert  that  any  such 
board  has  ever  done  it  or  is  at  all  likely  to  do  it. 


The  Board  and  Its  Methods 


93 


The  second  resolution  was  that  the  board  should  never  use  its 
influence  nor  even  give  advice  about  the  choice  of  candidates  for 
appointment.  This  was  occasioned  by  the  fact  that  the  School 
for  the  Deaf  needed  a  new  superintendent,  and  two  members 
wished  to  use  the  board’s  influence  in  favor  of  one  candidate 
and  strongly  against  another.  I  argued  against  such  action; 
I  said  “it’s  our  business  to  supervise  this  superintendent’s  work 
and  tell  what  we  find  out  about  it.  Suppose  there  should  be 
criticism  of  him  and  we  investigate;  out  report  must  be  above 
suspicion  of  bias.  If  we  had  supported  his  candidacy  and  later 
investigated  charges  and  declared  him  innocent,  some  people 
would  say  that  he  was  our  man  and  we  had  whitewashed  him. 
If  on  the  contrary  we  had  opposed  his  appointment  and  later 
found  something  wrong,  it  would  be  easy  to  accuse  us  of  being 
against  him  unfairly.  We  must  be  absolutely  positive  as  to 
policies  and  methods  and  absolutely  impartial  as  to  men.”  The 
board  adopted  the  resolution  I  suggested  and  lived  up  to  it  tho 
the  inducement  to  interfere  was  sometimes  very  strong,  and  on 
one  occasion  I  altho  not  the  board  succumbed  to  the  temptation. 

There  had  been  serious  mismanagement  in  the  Eastern  hos¬ 
pital  at  Richmond  resulting,  among  other  tragedies  in  the  death 
of  a  patient  from  abuse  by  an  attendant  and  a  trial  with  a  verdict 
that  sent  the  guilty  man  to  prison  for  a  long  term.  The  superin¬ 
tendent  who  was  one  of  the  last  of  the  old-time  political 
appointees  now  happily  obsolete  in  Indiana,  had  resigned  and 
the  trustees  had  to  choose  his  successor.  This  was  immediately 
after  the  legislative  session  of  1891  at  which  many  wires  had 
been  pulled  and  the  trustees’  names  had  been  on  a  political  slate 
which  included  the  name  of  a  candidate  for  superintendent. 

This  man  was  one  of  the  noxious  class  of  political  doctors. 
He  had  been  pension  examiner  in  Monroe  County  and  had  held 
one  petty  political  job  after  another  his  last  one  having  been 
that  of  assistant  physician  at  the  Central  Hospital  from  which 
he  had  been  discharged  for  cause,  but  he  was  supposed  to  have 
“influence”. 

The  hospital  board  consisted  as  did  all  such  bodies  then  of 
three  members,  two  Democrats  and  one  Republican.  The  latter 
was  a  man  of  high  character  and  ability.  One  of  the  Democrats 
was  of  similar  character  but  not  quite  so  much  ability.  The 


94 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


other  and  most  influential  member  was  a  life-long  politician, 
whose  activities  had  been  during  the  worst  era  of  Indiana  poli¬ 
tics  that  period  which  had  fortunately  ended  with  the  general 
election  of  1888.  This  trustee’s  brother,  a  man  of  much  more 
than  ordinary  ability,  was  chairman  of  the  State  Democratic 
Committee;  an  honest  man  according  to  his  lights  but  naturally 
holding  the  success  of  his  party  as  the  chief  consideration.  The 
position  of  trustee  paid  only  a  small  salary  but  it  had  been 
thought  desirable  because  under  the  old  regime  it  carried  much 
patronage. 

When  I  discovered  the  deal  the  unfit  candidate  was  to  be 
elected  in  a  few  days.  Nothing  could  be  done  about  it  directly. 
I  determined  to  try  the  method  of  indirection.  The  editor  of 
the  leading  democratic  paper  of  the  state  The  Indianapolis 
Sentinel,  was  S.  E.  Morss,  a  cultured  gentleman  of  high  charac¬ 
ter  and  somewhat  fastidious  tastes.  He  was  sincely  desirous 
to  induce  his  party  to  rehabilitate  itself  in  the  eyes  of  the  people 
by  giving  the  state  a  strong  and  clean  administration. 

I  called  on  Mr.  Morss  and  told  him  of  the  deal  and  that  the 
candidate  was  not  only  incompetent  but  a  man  of  corrupt  life; 
his  misdeeds  had  taken  the  specially  bad  form  from  an  institution 
point  of  view  of  illicit  relations  with  women  employees  of  the 
hospital  where  he  was  assistant;  it  was  for  such  conduct  more 
than  for  incompetence  that  he  had  been  discharged.  I  tried  to 
make  the  editor  see  that  the  appointment  would  be  disastrous 
not  only  to  the  management  of  the  hospital  but  to  the  party; 
which  in  the  recent  past  had  suffered  from  bad  conduct  of  insti¬ 
tution  affairs. 

Mr.  Morss  at  first  refused  to  take  a  hand  he  said  it  was  no 
business  of  a  newspaper  to  interfere  in  appointments.  Then  I 
played  a  card  that  won.  I  knew  the  candidate  was  coarse  and 
vulgar,  ill-educated  and  not  even  on  the  surface  a  gentleman. 
So  I  asked  the  editor  just  one  favor  to  send  for  the  man  and  give 
him  a  brief  interview;  this  he  promised  to  do. 

Mr.  Morss  had  as  confidential  man  a  rather  astute  reporter 
who  knew  politics  from  the  inside.  He  had  him  arrange  the 
interview.  The  fastidious  gentleman  was  disgusted  with  the 
man’s  boorishness,  especially  his  atrocious  grammar,  and  sent 
the  reporter  to  me  for  advice.  He  asked  me  what  I  knew  against 


The  Board  and  Its  Methods 


95 


the  man  and  I  referred  him  to  Dr.  Wright  at  the  Central  Hos¬ 
pital  and  particularly  to  Wright’s  private  secretary  Mr.  Heeb. 

In  an  hour  or  two  he  returned  fully  convinced  that  the  con¬ 
sequences  of  the  appointment  would  be  quite  as  bad  as  I  had 
predicted  and  asked  what  I  could  suggest.  I  advised  him  to  see 
the  state  chairman  and  tell  him  what  he  had  discovered  about 
the  candidate ;  to  warn  him  that  trouble  would  be  sure  to  follow 
his  appointment  and  with  the  editor’s  consent,  to  say  that  if 
trouble  did  arise,  the  party  organ  instead  of  trying  to  find 
excuses  for  or  to  whitewash  the  trustees  would  declare  they  had 
been  warned  and  had  sinned  against  the  light.  This  the  reporter 
did  and  the  candidate  was  dropped.  It  is  possible  that  he  does 
not  know  to  this  dav  the  share  I  had  in  his  defeat. 

Of  course  I  could  not  tell  my  own  board  because  tho  my 
motive  was  good  and  the  result  beneficial  I  had  disregarded  a 
rule  which  I  had  induced  them  to  adopt.  I  excused  myself  to 
my  own  conscience  by  the  thought  that  I  had  acted  in  the  capacity 
of  a  private  citizen  not  as  secretary  of  the  board. 

A  few  weeks  later  the  state  chairman  called  to  thank  me. 
He  said  they  were  about  to  make  a  serious  mistake  and  owed  me 
a  big  debt.  I  assured  him  that  I  had  done  nothing  whatever, — 
that  it  was  all  due  to  the  reporter, — that  the  Board  of  State 
Charities  could  not  do  that  sort  of  thing  because  it  carefully 
abstained  from  being  for  or  against  any  candidate.  But  the 
chairman  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eve  which  was  almost  a  wink 
thanked  me  again  and  told  me  that  in  future  when  the  board  had 
anything  before  the  legislature  I  must  be  sure  to  let  him  know. 

At  the  Northern  Hospital  there  was  a  very  competent  assist¬ 
ant  physician.  Dr.  Samuel  E.  Smith  between  whom  and  myself 
a  warm  friendship  existed.  In  November  1890,  Dr.  Smith  was 
about  to  accept  a  better  position  in  Michigan.  I  urged  him  to 
remain  in  Indiana  assuring  him  that  promotion  would  come  his 
way  soon.  I  knew  the  conditions  at  the  Eastern  hospital  and 
was  convinced  that  it  was  only  a  question  of  a  short  time  until 
something  would  happen  that  would  make  a  change  inevitable, 
and  when  that  time  came  the  logical  man  to  take  charge  would 
be  this  well-trained,  capable  and  honorable  chief-assistant  at  the 
other  hospital. 


96  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

It  happened  that  the  superintendent  in  Michigan  who  had 
offered  Dr.  Smith  an  appointment  was  a  college  classmate  and 
personal  friend.  The  appointment  was  not  to  be  made  for  three 
months.  So  I  advised  Smith  to  ask  his  friend  for  a  three  months 
option.  Ordinarily  such  a  course  would  have  been  absurd  but  the 
circumstances  justified  it  and  the  request  was  granted. 

Before  the  three  months  expired  the  circumstances  related 
.  above  came  about  and  after  some  interesting  incidents  Dr.  Smith 
w^as  appointed  at  Easthaven.  That  was  in  the  Spring  of  1891 
and  my  friend  is  today  the  honored  and  trusted  Superintendent 
of  the  Eastern  Hospital. 


Chapter  Three 


THE  FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT 

When  the  first  annual  report  was  to  be  made  the  board  held 
a  special  meeting  to  consider  it.  A  draft  I  presentel  told  of  the 
work  of  eighteen  months  of  the  reforms  which  had  already  been 
accomplished;  and  outlined  a  program  for  the  future.  When  I 
had  read  the  draft,  Mr.  McCulloch  said,  “friends  if  in  fifteen 
years  from  today  we  shall  have  accomplished  all  those  things  the 
Secretary  has  outlined  for  us  we  may  count  ourselves  very  suc¬ 
cessful”.  About  fifteen  years  later  after  reading  Amos  Butler’s 
report  for  the  year  1905,  I  wrote  my  congratulations  and  said, 
“your  board,  which  used  to  be  my  board,  has  completed  the  pro¬ 
gram  I  outlined  for  it  in  1890.  Now  you  must  create  a  new 
program  of  reform  and  progress  for  yourself  and  your  successor. 
I  hope  it  will  be  as  successful.” 

The  board  fully  realized  the  importance  of  its  first  report. 
Such  documents  have  been  fatal  to  those  making  them.  In  Ore¬ 
gon  a  few  years  earlier  a  State  Board  of  Charities  had  only 
lasted  two  years ;  it  first  report  was  a  great  state  document  but 
it  was  so  drastic  and  the  board  in  its  brief  life  had  made  so 
many  enemies  and  so  few  friends  that  the  next  session  of  the 
legislature  wiped  it  out.  The  early  history  of  the  Ohio  board  had 
been  similar,  tho  it  had  been  resuscitated  after  a  short  inter¬ 
regnum  as  the  Oregon  board  had  not.  It  is  essential  to  success 
for  a  board  of  the  kind  that  it  make  enemies  but  it  must  also 
make  more  friends  if  it  is  to  survive. 

The  dangerous  part  of  the  first  report  was  that  on  the  North¬ 
ern  prison.  The  warden  was  supposed  to  be  the  most  influential 
politician  in  Indiana  and  his  party  was  in  power.  While  the 
report  did  not  accuse  him  of  dishonesty,  it  did  set  forth  in  plain 
and  positive  terms  the  iniquity  of  the  slop  contract  which  then 
prevailed  at  the  prison  as  did  similar  contracts  in  many  states. 


(97) 


98 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


This  contract  was  a  method  of  eking  out  the  warden’s  inadequate 
salary;  he  was  allowed  to  buy  the  refuse  food,  or  slop,  for  a 
fixed  sum  per  annum  and  dispose  of  it  in  the  most  profitable  way 
for  himself,  which  he  did  by  feeding  a  herd  of  hogs  using  pris¬ 
oners’  labor  to  guard  them.  The  profit  was  supposed  to  be 
about  $3,500  a  year,  altho  the  warden  had  told  me  that  he  did 
not  know  how  much  he  made. 

The  special  evil  of  the  contract  was  not  in  the  illicit  profit 
to  the  warden  but  in  its  effect  on  the  convicts.  The  more  refuse 
food  the  bigger  the  profit  and  every  prisoner  believed  he  was 
fed  in  such  a  way  as  to  increase  the  slop;  and  there  was  some 
foundation  for  the  belief.  About  the  only  meat  part  of  the 
ration  was  salt  pork.  I  had  made  a  careful  study  of  the  way  this 
part  of  the  food  was  handled  and  was  convinced  that  less  than 
one-fourth  of  the  pork  bought  was  actually  eaten  the  rest  went 
to  the  refuse.  The  convicts  thought  they  were  being  defrauded 
where  it  hurts  the  most,  in  tlieir  stomachs,  for  the  warden’s 
profit.  Criminals  who  have  been  unjust  to  everyone  else  are  very 
sensitive  when  anyone  is  unjust  to  them. 

Frederick  H.  Wines  of  Illinois  on  a  recent  visit  to  Indiana, 
had  warned  me  when  I  told  him  about  the  slop  contract  of  the 
danger  of  attacking  it.  He  said  “of  course  it’s  wrong  but  it  is 

common  in  many  prisons ;  much  better  leave  it  alone  if  you  want 

< 

your  board  to  survive;  you  will  do  no  good  and  much  harm; 
the  warden  is  too  strong  for  you,  if  you  make  an  enemy  of  him 
the  next  legislature  will  wipe  you  out”.  But  I  felt  that  it  was 
one  of  the  worst  things  I  had  unearthed  in  a  state  institution 
and  to  ignore  it  would  be  to  stultify  myself  to  a  degree  that 
would  leave  me  little  self  respect. 

When  I  read  that  part  of  the  draft  relating  to  the  prison, 
Mr.  McCulloch  my  wise  and  prudent  friend  and  the  leader  of  the 
Board,  said  “now  friends  let  us  consider  this.  It  may  be  right 
for  us  to  make  this  report  to  the  Governor  and  publish  it  to  the 
state  but  if  we  do  it  let  it  be  with  our  eyes  open.  If  there  are 
risks  let  us  take  them  deliberately.”  Then  turning  to  me  he 
said  “Mr.  Johnson  what  do  you  expect  the  result  will  be  if  we 
make  such  a  report?”  I  told  him  what  Wines  had  said  and  added 
that  the  most  probable  result  would  be  the  bitter  opposition  of 


The  First  Annual  Report 


99 


the  warden  and  his  friends  and  such  a  reduction  of  our  appro¬ 
priation  as  to  make  the  board’s  existence  useless. 

Then  faithful  Timothy  Nicholson  said,  “ Alexander  Johnson, 
does  thee  think  we  ought  to  make  the  report  as  thee  has  written 
it?”  I  replied  “Indeed  we  ought,  to  abstain  would  be  to  sacri¬ 
fice  our  own  self  respect  and  disgrace  ourselves  in  the  eyes  of 
the  public”,  and  Timothy  rejoined  “Mr.  Chairman,  I  move  that 
we  make  the  report  as  written  by  the  secretary”.  Then  for  once 
the  board  voted,  the  chairman  calling  on  each  member  for  Aye 
or  No  and  the  motion  was  unanimously  adopted.  From  that  day 
until  the  meeting  of  the  legislature  I  contemplated  losing  my 
job  and  wondered  what  the  next  one  would  be.  To  the  board 
members  the  risk  was  of  losing  an  agreeable  and  dignified  but 
unpaid  position  in  the  state’s  service,  to  me  it  meant  bread  and 
butter. 

The  legislature  I  had  to  face  in  January  1891,  was  the  first 
of  many  with  which  I  was  to  be  concerned.  I  knew  little  of 
politicians  and  was  more  afraid  of  them  than  they  deserved. 
The  outcome  of  the  prison  report  was  absurdly  different  from 
what  I  dreaded.  The  warden  was  retiring  to  establish  himself 
as  a  banker  in  the  town  where  he  had  once  lived  while  a  section 
hand  on  the  Monon  Railroad ;  before  he  began  his  political  climb 
by  the  steps  of  deputy  sheriff,  chief  of  police,  sheriff  of  the  county, 
to  the  wardenship.  He  did  not  care  about  the  fate  of  the  slop 
contract  for  his  successor  and  paid  no  attention  to  the  Board  of 
State  Charities. 

When  the  first  report  was  published  it  attracted  much  more 
attention  than  the  average  state  document  from  which  it  differed 
widely.  Several  of  its  suggestions  were  carried  into  effect  by 
the  assembly.  A  bill  became  law  making  more  specific  the  pro¬ 
hibition  of  anything  like  the  slop  contract ;  the  previous  law  had 
merely  forbidden  in  general  terms  any  personal  profit  by  an 
official  in  connection  with  institution  business.  All  niy  dire 
forebodings  were  unnecessary  and  I  was  encouraged  to  persevere 
in  following  the  advice  of  Emerson  “always  do  what  you  are 
afraid  to  do”,  advice  which  I  have  always  believed  in  and  which 
whenever  I  have  followed  it  has  proved  its  wisdom. 

This  first  report  was  one  of  many  which  have  presented  plans 
and  methods  to  the  law-making  body  which  have  been  approved 


100  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

and  acted  on.  At  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction  in  1906,  Governor  Hanley  of  Indiana  in  praising  the 
state  board  said  that  many  of  its  suggestions  had  been  approved 
by  the  legislature  and  had  been  found  beneficial  and  that  none 
of  the  legislation  enacted  on  its  advice  has  ever  been  repealed 
or  materially  amended. 


Chapter  Four 


THE  BOARD  AND  THE  NEWSPAPERS 

\ 

For  a  time  after  the  board  began  its  work  the  mere  fact  that 
it  was  a  new  department  of  the  state  government  made  anything 
about  it  “News”.  I  took  advantage  of  my  own  and  the  board’s 
early  news-value  to  establish  cordial  relations  with  the  news¬ 
paper  people  especially  the  reporters  whose  friendship  is  even 
more  valuable  than  that  of  the  editors. 

When  the  first  novity  wore  off  I  kept  the  reporters  in  line 
by  constant  efforts  to  give  them  H.  I.  stories*  of  which  my  visits 
to  the  varied  institutions  of  the  state  and  counties  afforded  me 
an  ample  supply.  I  kept  a  pigeon-hole  in  my  desk  for  items 
ready  for  the  news-gatherers  of  the  state  house  who  made  my 
office  every  day.  I  never  gave  the  same  item  to  two  men  except 
of  course  the  notice  of  a  meeting.  The  boys  had  a  saying  that 
“you  might  draw  the  rest  of  the  state  house  blank  but  there  was 
always  a  story  in  Johnson’s  office”. 

These  items  were  published  in  the  three  metropolitan  papers 
and  copied  in  the  many  county  sheets  so  that  after  a  few  months 
the  Board  of  State  Charities  was  the  best  advertised  arm  of  the 
government,  getting  scores  of  items  weekly  in  the  various  papers. 
Will  Fortune,  then  on  the  Journal,  used  to  say  in  good-humored 
sarcasm  that  I  made  two  items  out  of  every  interview,  one  when 
I  gave  it  another  the  next  day  when  I  corrected  it  because  the 
reporter  had  not  got  me  right. 

Fortune  as  a  reporter  had  an  uncanny  and  sometimes  dis¬ 
turbing  ability  of  reading  the  mind  of  the  man  whom  he  inter¬ 
viewed.  On  one  occasion  there  was  a  rather  delicate  situation  in 
connection  with  one  of  the  hospitals  and  some  facts  leaked  out 
with  which  the  Board  of  State  Charities  was  concerned.  For¬ 
tune  came  to  me  to  get  the  thing  straight  and  was  told  all  that 

♦Human  interest  stories.  A  rule  with  some  newspapers  is  that  there 
must  be  at  least  one  good  H.  I.  story  daily,  even  if  it  has  to  be  invented. 


(101) 


102 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


was  at  all  ready  for  publication.  In  the  published  interview  he 
told  all  I  had  said,  but  he  added  in  two  or  three  places  “but  Mr. 
Johnson  thinks”  so  and  so,  putting  me  in  the  embarrassing  posi¬ 
tion  of  having  given  away  things  I  had  no  business  to  make 
public.  On  his  next  call  I  asked  him  how  a  public  man  could  make 
sure  of  not  being  misrepresented  by  a  newspaper.  He  told  me  the 
only  way  was  to  insist  on  seeing  a  proof  of  every  interview  before 
it  was  printed,  and  added,  “has  anyone  been  misrepresenting 
you?”  I  told  him  that  his  last  interview  with  me  contained 
statements  that  I  most  certainly  had  not  made.  He  replied  “I 
did  not  write  that  you  said  those  things,  I  said  you  thought  them. 
If  you  deny  that  you  thought  as  I  said  you  did  I  will  make  the 
most  abject  apology”.  I  replied  “what  I  think  is  none  of  your 
business ;  you  should  tell  only  what  I  say”.  Of  course  the  news¬ 
paper  man  had  the  best  of  it  I  could  not  deny  that  my  thoughts 
had  been  read  accurately. 

The  perfect  reporter  was  Ernest  P.  Bicknell  to  whom  it  was 
quite  safe  to  give  particulars  not  yet  ripe  for  publication.  Then 
when  the  fitting  time  came  instead  of  writing  from  a  hasty 
interview  he  knew  all  about  the  subject  and  could  present  it  in 
masterly  style.  Both  these  men  and  several  others  of  their  con¬ 
freres,  it  was  my  privilege  to  have  as  friends  and  helpers.  They 
are  today  occupying  enviable  positions  in  the  world. 

In  visiting  the  counties  I  called  on  the  local  editors  and  gave 
them  exclusive  bits  about  their  local  affairs  which  I  then  with¬ 
held  from  the  big  city  dailies.  There  was  always  plenty  of  matter 
for  each  without  duplication. 

Each  year  when  I  began  to  prepare  the  annual  report  I 
would  give  the  news-men  “items  from  the  forthcoming  report 
of  the  Board”.  When  a  report  is  once  published  it  gets  a  full 
notice  and  thereafter  its  news  value  is  gone.  But  “forthcoming” 
items  are  always  news.  I  realized  how  much  more  value  there 
is  in  three  or  four  small  items  than  in  one  twice  as  long  as  all 
combined.  I  always  managed  about  twelve  or  fifteen  forthcom¬ 
ing  items  in  each  paper  no  two  ever  having  the  same. 

The  value  of  shrewd  handling  of  the  newspapers  is  well  illus¬ 
trated  by  an  incident  that  occurred  at  Logansport.  The  leading 
paper  there  was  strong  for  the  hospital  at  Longcliff,  but  there 
was  an  evening  sheet  which  had  acquired  a  wrong  estimate  of 


The  Board  and  the  Newspapers 


103 


what  was  really  a  very  good  administration  and  which  was  con¬ 
tinually  printing  stories  mostly  with  a  very  slight  foundation 
of  fact  reflecting  on  the  superintendent  and  his  subordinates. 
This  was  during  the  first  year  of  the  board  and  Dr.  Rogers,  tho 
always  very  polite  had  not  realized  that  we  could  be  of  any 
benefit  to  him. 

There  happened  one  of  those  series  of  misfortunes  which 
sometimes  come  to  the  best  managed  hospital.  A  patient  hanged 
himself;  another  strayed  on  to  the  railroad  track  and  was  killed; 
a  corpse  in  the  morgue  was  attacked  by  rats ;  and  the  spiteful 
little  sheet  made  the  most  of  each  fatality  until  it  got  on  the 
good  doctor’s  nerves  and  he  was  so  worried  by  the  persecution 
that  he  wrote  the  board  begging  us  to  make  a  thoro  investigation 
of  these  accidents  and  of  his  general  management. 

The  investigation  was  promptly  made.  We  found  the  general 
management  excellent  and  the  unfortunate  occurrences  altho 
they  might  conceivably  have  been  prevented,  so  purely  accidental 
that  they  did  not  constitute  a  cause  of  blame. 

As  soon  as  the  investigation  was  written  up  I  called  on  the 
unfriendly  editor,  whom  I  knew  pretty  well  as  I  met  him  twice 
a  year  at  the  Grand  Lodge  of  Oddfellows,  and  told  him  he  was 
all  wrong  in  his  attitude  to  Dr.  Rogers  who  was  a  competent  and 
faithful  public  servant.  The  editor  was  really  a  good  fellow  at 
heart  and  had  honestly  thought  his  adverse  opinion  well  founded, 
especially  as  it  gave  him  opportunity  for  so  many  spicy  stories. 
Under  my  eloquence  he  gradually  weakened  and  when  the  iron 
was  hot  I  struck.  I  said  “if  you  will  publish  our  report  as  I  have 
written  it  and  accompany  it  with  an  editorial  calling  attention 
to  it  as  trustworthy  I  will  give  you  a  copy  now.  Otherwise  I 
will  give  it  to  the  city  dailies  tomorrow  and  if  you  print  it,  as 
you  must  since  it  is  important  local  news  it  will  be  second-hand”. 

The  editor  yielded  to  the  temptation  of  a  fine  scoop  and 
promised  to  be  good.  Thereafter  Dr.  Rogers  was  as  cordial  when 
the  board  was  mentioned  as  he  had  formerly  been  lukewarm. 

In  Indianapolis  there  were  two  men’s  literary  clubs,  one 
whose  members  were  chiefly  elderly  gentlemen  of  standing  and 
wealth  who  were  not  hospitable  to  new-comers.  Myron  Reed 
was  a  member  and  used  to  declare  if  the  present  bunch  were  all 
out  not  one  of  them  could  get  in.  The  other  club  was  made  up 


104 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


of  the  junior  leaders  in  business  and  the  professions.  At  that 
period  Indianapolis  had  on  the  staffs  of  its  three  papers  a  num¬ 
ber  of  exceptionally  able  young  men.  Many  of  the  reporters  of 
1889  to  1899,  like  Fortune  and  Bicknell  above-mentioned  are 
now  occupying  fine  positions  in  the  newspaper  and  other  worlds. 
These  men  belonged  to  and  were  the  back-bone  of  the  Fortnightly 
Club  to  which  I  was  elected  soon  after  I  came  to  Indianapolis. 
The  influence  of  this  club  was  far  in  excess  of  its  membership; 
it  was  exerted  for  good  causes  with  telling  effect.*  At  a  meeting 
of  the  club  I  read  a  paper  with  the  title  “Common  Schools  of 
Vice”.  It  was  a  true  story  of  the  jails  of  the  state  as  they  then 
existed.  One  bad  one  tho  by  no  means  the  worst  was  in  the 
capital  city.  The  young  newspaper  men  took  up  the  matter  and 
conducted  a  campaign  of  publicity  which  resulted  in  a  new  and 
model  jail  in  a  year  or  two  thereafter. 

During  my  public  career  in  Indiana  I  always  had  the  best 
of  the  newspaper  men  on  my  side  and  I  was  often  helped  by  them 
both  while  I  was  secretary  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities  and 
after  I  became  superintendent  of  the  School  for  Feeble-Minded.* 

♦It  may  seem  invidious  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  mentioning  with 
gratitude,  the  names  of  Brown,  Bicknell,  Fortune,  Lane,  Nicholson,  Homa- 
day  and  Fuller,  whose  clear  vision  and  forceful  pens  did  much  for  social 
progress  in  Indiana  from  1889  to  1903. 


Chapter  Five 


ADVENTUBES  AMONG  THE  INSANE 

The  work  of  inspection  is  in  effect  the  passing  of  judgment 
upon  what  you  inspect.  To  rightly  judge  a  man  or  an  institution 
one  must  know  many  men  and  many  institutions,  one  needs  a 
standard  of  values  which  can  only  be  gained  by  much  observation. 
So  I  took  every  opportunity  to  learn  my  trade  by  visiting  institu¬ 
tions  in  other  states,  especially  those  whose  life  and  labor  were 
like  to  those  in  Indiana.  Our  nearest  neighbors  were  Ohio, 
Michigan  and  Illinois,  and  I  never  missed  a  chance  to  go  to  one 
of  them,  being  invited  occasionally  thru  acquaintances  made  at 
the  National  Conference  and  by  reason  of  a  habit  of  speech  mak¬ 
ing.  Then  when  attending  the  National  Conference  there  were 
frequent  trips  offered  to  the  delegates  with  some  institution  as 
the  objective.  Wherever  I  went  I  saw  something  from  which  I 
could  learn,  sometimes  a  thing  to  copy,  sometimes  one  to  avoid. 

Early  in  the  first  year  of  the  board’s  history  the  need  of  more 
complete  care  of  the  insane  either  by  the  state  or  by  the  counties 
under  state  supervision  began  to  be  very  evident.  At  that  time 
there  were  many  insane  kept  in  almshouses  some  even  in  jails 
and  other  unfit  places.  It  seemed  as  tho  Indiana  would  never 
provide  for  all  her  insane  in  state  hospitals.  At  the  same  time 
there  were  many  inmates  of  the  hospitals  who  were  old  chronic 
cases,  not  dangerous  to  themselves  nor  to  others.  Their  condition 
was  but  slightly  different  from  that  of  the  old  paupers  in  the 
poorhouses.  They  were  not  receiving  constant  medical  care  and 
they  did  not  need  it. 

The  per  capita  cost  of  the  hospitals  was  high.  Now  no  cost 
can  be  too  high  if  it  is  necessary  and  if  it  results  in  restoring  to 
productive  citizenship  men  and  women  who  otherwise  would  be 
permanent  burdens.  But  to  keep  a  host  of  incurable  people  at 
an  unnecessary  high  cost  is  evidently  poor  policy. 


(105) 


106 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


On  the  other  hand  there  were  many  serious  cases  needing  the 
sort  of  care  which  seemingly  only  a  state  hospital  can  provide; 
who  were  being  kept  in  the  county  poor  asylums  because  there 
was  no  room  for  them  in  the  hospitals,  most  of  whom  were  badly 
neglected.  Still  more  serious  was  the  fact  that  recent  and  pre¬ 
sumably  curable  or  recoverable  cases  were  delayed  admission 
until  sometimes  they  became  past  cure. 

At  the  National  Conference  the  delegates  from  Wisconsin 
had  often  lauded  their  system  of  county  asylums.  The  details 
of  that  system  have  been  a  matter  of  so  much  discussion  at  the 
Conference,  being  so  fiercely  attacked  by  the  advocates  of  exclu¬ 
sive  state  care  and  so  warmly  defended  by  the  Wisconsin  people 
that  it  is  not  necessary  to  give  them  here.  It  is  enough  to  say 
that  the  plan  is  neither  exclusive  state  nor  exclusive  county  care, 
but  a  compromise  which  has  the  merits  of  both.  At  that  time 
Wisconsin  was  the  only  state  in  the  Union;  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Minnesota;  which  provided  more  or  less  adequate 
care  for  all  her  insane. 

The  State  Board  delegated  John  R.  Elder  and  myself  to  go 
to  Wisconsin  and  study  the  county  asylum  system  and  to  report 
if  it  was  suitable  to  be  recommended  for  Indiana.  The  State 
Board  of  Wisconsin  had  a  special  fund  to  defray  the  expenses 
of  such  visitors  and  they  cordially  invited  the  committee  from 
Indiana  to  be  their  guests  on  the  tour.  Mr.  Elder  and  I  were 
met  at  Milwaukee  by  the  Wisconsin  secretary  and  taken  to 
seven  of  the  county  and  one  of  the  state  institutions.  We  were 
much  impressed  by  what  we  saw  and  heard  and  were  completely 
converted  to  the  Wisconsin  plan  as  being  suitable  to  a  sparse, 
chiefly  rural,  population. 

A  few  incidents  of  the  trip  are  interesting  and  illuminating. 
At  Dane  County  asylum  we  found  a  very  intelligent  superin¬ 
tendent  who  with  his  wife  and  two  hired  people  took  care  of 
fifty  men  and  fifty-four  women.  All  doors  were  open,  all 
patients  busy  on  the  farm  or  in  the  house.  Seeking  to  draw  out 
the  superintendent  I  asked  him  “Mr.  Myers,  why  can’t  you  take 
care  of  five  hundred  as  well  as  one  hundred,  why  not  hire  people 
to  help  you  ?”  answer  “oh  no,  it  would  not  do,  you  see  I  have  fifty 
men  and  my  wife  has  fifty-four  women  to  care  for,  we  know  them 
each  and  we  deal  with  them  directly;  there  for  instance,”  point* 


Among  the  Insane 


107 


ing  to  a  man  who  was  loading  a  wagon,  “is  a  fellow  who  got  sour 
on  his  job  last  week.  Before  I  got  him  suited  with  another  I  had 
to  change  the  work  of  four  other  men.”  Then  I  said  “but  why 
if  he  got  ugly  not  lock  him  up  for  a  while?”  “Oh,  Mr.  Johnson, 
you  don’t  understand  crazy  people;  do  you  know  how  to  make  a 
dog  cross?”  “Sure,  chain  him  up.”  “Just  the  same  with  crazy 
folks.  If  I  locked  that  man  up  for  three  days  I  would  not  get 
any  good  out  of  him  for  months  after.” 

Mr.  Myers  told  us  of  a  man  he  called  “Dutch  Louey”  who 
had  been  a  chronic  runaway.  After  a  couple  of  elopements  he 
cured  him  by  appointing  him  mail  carrier  of  the  asylum ;  he  had 
to  walk  two  miles  twice  a  day  to  the  post  office  and  he  never 
ran  away  again.  Years  afterward  I  tried  a  similar  remedy  on 
a  feeble-minded  boy  who  had  the  curse  of  the  wandering  foot 
with  complete  success.  Human  nature  is  so  made  that  the  tempta¬ 
tion  of  things  tabooed  is  very  strong.  It’s  possible  that  if  the 
fatal  apple  had  not  been  forbidden  we  might  all  have  been  living 
in  Eden  today. 

Another  asylum  visited  was  in  Iowa  County.  Here  the  reve¬ 
nue  from  the  state’s  contribution  which  is  one-half  the  cost ;  and 
the  amount  received  from  other  counties;  which  did  not  have 
asylums  but  sent  their  insane  to  their  neighbors ;  with  the  produce 
Of  a  four-hundred  acre  farm  well  tilled  by  insane  labor;  made 
the  cost  of  the  chronic  insane  to  the  county  nil.  On  the  same 
farm  half  a  mile  from  the  asylum  was  the  poor  house.  The  work 
of  caring  for  the  paupers  all  feeble,  old  people;  for  an  able- 
bodied  sane  pauper  was  unknown  in  Wisconsin ;  was  well  done 
by  a  detail  of  insane  patients  from  the  asylum. 

Not  only  were  the  so-called  incurable  insane  well  kept  and 
happy  on  this  system,  but  occasional  recoveries  took  place;  and 
they  were  all  patients  who  had  been  treated  at  the  state  hospital 
for  two  years  without  any  evidence  of  return  to  sanity. 

The  committee  reported  in  favor  of  the  modified  county  plan 
for  Indiana ;  but  the  state  had  adopted  the  complete  state-care 
plan  in  theory  and  sticks  to  it,  altho  a  few  years  ago  the  most 
populous  county,  despairing  of  getting  all  her  insane  into  the 
state  hospital,  equipped  a  county  insane  asylum  as  an  adjunct  to 
the  poorhouse. 


108  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

To  show  the  value  of  a  supervisory  board  and  to  illustrate 
the  methods  of  the  Indiana  board  and  its  secretary  with  the 
institutions  a  few  incidents  will  be  helpful. 

One  Sunday  morning  I  received  a  telegram  from  Dr.  Smith 
of  Easthaven,  simply  saying  “please  come  over  on  the  next 
train”.  In  two  hours  the  hospital  was  reached.  About  three 
days  earlier  a  recovered  female  patient  had  been  discharged. 
Her  home  was  within  two  miles  of  the  hospital  and  she  had 
started  alone  to  go  there  but  had  not  arrived.  Her  husband 
became  excited  and  made  the  case  known  to  a  somewhat  yellow 
daily.  The  Richmond  Independent.  Whether  the  lie  was  made 
of  whole  cloth  by  the  sensational  reporter  or  was  founded  on  the 
husband’s  suspicions  was  never  discovered ;  but  on  Sunday  morn¬ 
ing  a  most  thrilling  scandal  was  given  the  county.  The  woman’s 
disappearance  was  blamed  on  the  hospital  management;  it  was 
declared  that  she  had  been  a  victim  of  a  criminal  operation  for 
the  purpose  of  concealing  immoral  conduct  of  the  physicians  and 
that  they  had  spirited  her  away. 

The  woman  had  relatives  in  Springfield,  O.  and  she  had  often 
talked  of  going  there  to  live.  The  next  morning  the  superin¬ 
tendent  of  the  hospital,  the  district  prosecuting  attorney,  Tim¬ 
othy  Nicholson  a  member  of  the  state  board  and  I  went  to 
Springfield  and  found  the  woman.  She  confessed  that  she  had 
been  induced  to  desert  her  husband  by  a  mischievous  aunt  who 
had  met  her  on  her  way  home  from  the  Hospital.  She  was  taken 
to  the  office  of  the  leading  physician  in  Springfield,  a  man  whose 
name  was  synonymous  with  high  character  and  professional 
skill.  He  examined  her  and  made  a  sworn  statement  that  there 
had  been  no  operation  of  the  kind  alleged  nor  any  possible  reason 
for  one  for  months  past.  The  party  returned  to  Richmond  in  the 
afternoon  bringing  the  woman.  They  were  met  at  the  train  by 
the  husband  whose  gratitude  was  profuse. 

The  next  morning  the  two  leading  newspapers  of  the  state 
printed  the  story  in  full  with  a  statement  signed  by  the  secre¬ 
tary  of  the  state  board;  and  the  scandal  was  dead.  Prompt, 
decisive  and  public  action  in  cases  of  scandal  by  a  board  which 
is  not  responsible  for  administration  and  therefore  is  not  sus¬ 
pected  of  trying  to  justify  itself  nor  to  screen  its  employees  and 
which  commands  the  confidence  of  the  public;  is  of  inestimable 


Among  the  Insane 


109 


value.  In  the  board’s  existence  of  about  two  and  a  half  years 
it  had  gained  that  public  confidence;  what  it  and  its  secretary 
said  was  unquestioned. 

Another  interesting  case  came  in  a  letter  received  by  the 
Governor  from  a  lady  in  Martinsville,  saying  that  she  had  been 
told  that  a  cousin  of  hers,  a  patient  in  the  Central  hospital,  had 
been  badly  abused  his  nose  and  leg  being  broken.  I  quickly 
interviewed  the  patient,  a  harmless  chronic  of  a  lively  temper, 
who  told  with  great  glee  how  his  nose  had  been  broken  in  a  fracas 
of  his  inciting  with  a  fellow-patient  and  showed  an  old  scar  on 
his  shin  that  he  had  got  in  falling  out  of  a  tree  when  he  was  a 
boy.  A  prompt  report  to  the  lady  brought  a  grateful  answer  and 
later  investigation  traced  the  story  to  a  former  attendant  who 
had  been  discharged  for  the  hospital-crime  of  striking  a  patient. 
The  usual  thing  in  such  a  case  is  for  the  attendant  to  claim  he 
had  to  leave  because  he  could  not  bear  to  see  the  way  the  poor 
insane  people  were  treated. 

When  the  legislative  visiting  committee  of  1891,  went  out  to 
the  Central  hospital,  Dr.  Wright  asked  me  to  help  him  entertain 
the  law-makers.  While  the  party  was  assembling  preparatory  to 
a  tour  of  the  wards,  one  of  the  senators  asked  me  where  he  could 
get  information  about  a  patient  from  his  county  whom  he  would 
like  to  see.  I  told  him  I  would  be  glad  to  escort  him  and  first 
going  to  the  registry  clerk  and  finding  the  patient  was  on  the 
twenty-fourth  ward,  I  invited  the  senator  to  go  there  with  me. 
From  the  front  center  to  the  twenty-fourth  it  was  necessary  to 
go  thru  two  other  wards  and  up  two  flights  of  stairs  and  several 
doors  had  to  be  unlocked  and  locked  again  which  as  I  carried 
the  keys  I  could  do. 

When  we  reached  the  ward  I  called  the  head  nurse  by  name 
and  enquired  how  Mrs.  Clark  was.  Hearing  she  was  well  and 
quiet  I  told  the  nurse  to  bring  her  into  the  reception  room, 
where  she  and  the  senator  had  a  visit,  after  which  I  escorted 
him  back  to  the  front  center;  whereupon  he  asked  what  was  my 
position  in  the  hospital  and  was  told  “none”.  “Then  how  do  you 
come  to  know  the  attendants  and  carry  those  keys?”;  answer 
“you  see  senator,  I  am  the  secretary  of  the  Board  of  State  Chari¬ 
ties,  one  of  my  duties  is  the  inspection  of  the  hospitals  and  I 
carry  the  keys  so  that  I  may  do  my  duty  thoroly”.  Then  the 


110 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


senator  exclaimed  “Mr.  Johnson  I  am  very  glad  I  met  you,  I 
came  to  the  legislature  fully  resolved  to  vote  to  abolish  your  board 
as  a  useless  expense.  I  thought  you  were  a  scheming  politician 
and  just  out  for  a  job  ;  but  I  tell  you  now  that  I  am  ready  to 
vote  to  double  your  appropriation.”  The  possession  of  the  pass¬ 
keys,  my  evident  familiarity  with  their  use  and  acquaintance 
with  the  attendants  had  had  a  wonderful  effect  on  the  mind  of 
the  senator  who  was  an  honest  man,  only  desiring  that  the 
state’s  business  should  be  properly  conducted  without  extrava¬ 
gance. 

Another  instance  of  the  advantage  to  the  general  welfare' 
of  complete  knowledge  of  the  institution  and  free  access  to  it 
occurred  a  few  months  later.  As  I  was  passing  the  front  door 
of  the  men’s  building  I  saw  three  well-dressed  men  standing  on 
the  sidewalk.  As  I  bowed  in  passing  (in  Indiana  the  simple- 
hearted  people  always  bow  as  they  meet,  whether  acquainted  or 
not)  one  of  the  men  accosted  me  as  follows:  “do  you  know  any¬ 
thing  about  this  place?”  Answer  “yes  I  know  a  great  deal  about 
it”.  “Then  perhaps  you  can  tell  us  where  they  keep  the  crazy 
people.  We  have  been  shown  around  but  we  have  seen  no  one 
who  looked  crazy,  and  we  think  they  are  hiding  what  they  do 
from  the  public.”  I  said,  “do  you  mean  those  who  are  naked, 
bedded  in  straw  and  kept  in  cages?”  “Yes,  those  are  the  ones 
we  want  to  see.”  “Well,  you  must  go  outside  the  state  to  see 
them  we  don’t  keep  any  of  that  kind  in  Indiana  hospitals.”  “Oh 
well  I  suppose  you  are  one  of  the  gang  here.”  Answer,  “No,  I  am 
not  employed  here,  but  if  you  will  come  with  me  I  will  show  you 
the  worst  patients  in  the  hospital.  We  will  go  in  by  the  back 
door  so  the  doctors  will  not  see  us  to  ask  questions.” 

I  escorted  the  party  thru  the  back  wards  of  the  men’s  building, 
showing  them,  among  about  two  hundred  patients,  two  or  three 
wearing  wristlets  or  some  other  simple  restraint  and  about  as 
many  secluded.  I  made  the  attendants  answer  the  question  what 
a  “back  ward”  means.  After  the  tour  I  said  “now  you  have  seen 
the  worst.  Ordinary  visitors  are  not  shown  these  wards.  This 
happens  to  be  a  quiet  day  but  there  is  seldom  any  more  confusion 
or  restraint  used  than  you  have  seen;  are  you  satisfied?”  They 
replied  “we  have  not  seen  the  basement”.  “Nor  have  I  for  a  year 
or  more  I  have  no  key  for  that.”  I  took  them  to  the  front  office 


Among  the  Insane 


111 


and  told  the  physician  in  charge  that  I  wished  to  go  thru  the 
basement.  The  porter  was  summoned  and  the  party  went  thru 
from  one  end  to  the  other.  They  saw  bales  of  blankets,  barrels 
of  flour  and  sugar,  cases  of  canned  goods,  crates  of  crockery  and 
bundles  of  brooms  but  nothing  alive  except  two  or  three  cats. 

As  we  went  out  of  the  front  door  the  leader  of  the  party 
exclaimed  “pray  sir,  tell  me  who  you  are”.  Answer  “secretary  of 
the  Board  of  State  Charities,  I  have  the  keys  so  that  I  may  go 
freely  to  make  my  inspections”.  Then  the  gentleman  said  in  a 
rather  courtly  and  dignified  manner,  “you  sir,  have  done  us  and 
the  state  a  service  this  day.  I  am  the  editor  and  proprietor  of 
the  Pike  County  Advertiser.  I  came  here  to  see  the  horrors 
which  I  had  been  informed  existed  in  this  hospital;  I  had 
intended  to  write  them  up  that  all  the  state  might  know.  You 
have  proved  to  me  sir,  that  my  informant  was  a  dastardly  liar, 
I  thank  you  sir,  sincerely.”  There  was  something  so  unusual  in 
the  style  of  this  speech  that  I  wrote  it  down  while  it  was  fresh 
in  my  mind. 

The  next  week  I  received  a  copy  of  the  paper  with  a  half  page 
panegyric  of  the  hospital  and  half  a  column  in  praise  of  the 
Board  of  State  Charities  and  its  secretary. 

The  Insane  in  Almshouses  and  Jails. 

In  1889  and  later,  the  difficulties  of  the  superintendents  of 
poor  asylums  were  greatly  increased  by  the  presence  of  many 
insane.  The  two  hospitals  were  both  overcrowded.  It  frequently 
happened  that  to  make  room  for  presumably  curable  cases 
patients  were  sent  out  from  a  state  hospital  as  not  recovered 
but  not  dangerous;  these  if  indigent  and  many  who  were  not, 
had  to  go  to  the  county  asylum.  In  one  or  two  of  the  most 
populous  counties  some  attempt  at  proper  provision  had  been 
made  for  these  wretched  beings  but  at  best  this  was  woefully 
inadequate.  In  some  of  the  small  asylums  they  were  kept  in 
what  were  called  the  “jails”;  some  of  which  had  formerly  been 
used  for  criminals.  In  others  they  were  in  cells  in  attic  or  cellar. 
There  in  the  hands  of  untrained  people  they  sometimes  developed 
very  dangerous  tendencies,  in  which  case  if  as  was  usual  the 
asylum  had  no  suitable  ward,  they  were  transferred  to  the 
county  jail  as  being  the  only  place  strong  enough  to  keep  them. 


112 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


Some  of  the  conditions  which  arose  were  deplorable.  Ill-suited 
as  the  ordinary  poorhouse  is  to  care  for  the  insane,  the  jail  is 
still  worse.  Sometimes  the  poor  wretches  would  be  passed  back 
and  forth  from  asylum  to  jail  and  jail  to  asylum,  each  officer 
trying  to  be  rid  of  a  troublesome  inmate.  Usually  however  when 
they  reached  the  jail  they  stayed  there  until  they  died  or  until 
the  state  hospital  had  room.  When  I  found  insane  people  under 
such  conditions  I  always  did  my  best  to  get  them  admitted  to 
one  of  the  state  hospitals,  and  the  superintendents  of  the  hos¬ 
pitals  were  responsive  and  took  all  they  could  possibly  make 
room  for. 

In  the  asylum  of  a  Southeastern  county  I  found  an  old 
demented  man  living  in  a  cell  with  no  furniture  but  a  heap  of 
straw ;  he  was  without  clothing,  covered  with  an  old  quilt.  The 
superintendent  treated  him  just  as  he  would  a  hog  and  when  he 
Was  admitted  to  the  hospital,  carried  him  there  in  a  crate.  The 
poor  creature  was  quite  harmless  and  gave  no  trouble  in  the 
hospital.  A  negro  who  when  I  found  him  had  been  for  a  year 
or  more  in  the  jail  of  a  Southwestern  county,  occupied  two  cells 
week  about.  Each  Saturday  morning  the  deputy  sheriff  opened 
the  door  of  the  cell  he  was  in  and  as  he  rushed  out  felled  him 
with  a  blow  on  the  head  with  a  club,  dragged  him  to  the  other 
cell  and  cleaned  out  the  one  he  had  left  with  a  hose.  A  loud  call 
on  the  Southern  hospital  got  a  quick  answer.  Seen  later  in  the 
hospital  he  was  a  quiet,  timid  patient  in  the  epileptic  ward. 
When  his  spasms  came  on  he  would  scream  loudly  but  otherwise 
he  was  harmless;  but  there  was  not  a  square  inch  of  his  scalp 
from  his  forehead  to  his  nape,  without  a  scar  from  that  deputy 
sheriff’s  club.  Yet  the  deputy  did  not  mean  to  be  cruel,  he  was 
merely  ignorant  and  cowardly. 

One  good  illustration  of  the  effects  of  the  inward  method 
and  also  of  the  influence  of  an  advisory  board  upon  public  offi¬ 
cials,  whom  it  had  no  authority  to  command,  may  be  interesting. 
On  my  first  visit  to  Tippecanoe  county  I  found  a  large  well  man¬ 
aged  asylum  except  for  the  insane  men’s  ward.  This  was  in  a 
special  building,  filled  with  iron  cages  in  each  of  which  an  insane 
man  was  kept  permanently.  The  ward  was  fairly  well  lighted 
and  heated  but  five  or  six  of  the  men  were  without  clothing,  the 
superintendent  saying  they  just  destroyed  it  as  soon  as  he  put 


Among  thb  Insane 


113 


it  on  them;  and  they  had  no  exercise  or  proper  care.  The  man 
in  charge  was  good-hearted  but  ignorant ;  he  wanted  to  do  what 
was  right  and  he  begged  me  to  tell  the  commissioners  what  ought 
to  be  done. 

The  commissioners  listened  but  were  non-committal  and 
seemed  indifferent.  About  a  year  later  the  new  hospital  for  the 
Eastern  district  was  opened  and  many  patients  were  transferred 
there  from  the  Central,  making  room  for  some  of  the  chronics 
who  had  been  returned  previously  to  the  asylums,  to  make  room 
in  the  hospital  for  new  cases. 

As  I  knew  all  the  asylums  Dr.  Wright  called  on  me  for  help 
in  choosing  the  most  serious  cases,  saying  with  rare  wisdom  that 
he  would  take  that  kind,  not  as  sometimes  happens  those  easiest 
to  care  for.  He  and  I  went  together  to  Lafayette  to  make  the 
choice.  The  commissioners  drove  out  with  us  to  the  asylum.  To 
my  surprise  and  delight  I  found  a  new  and  very  suitable  build¬ 
ing  for  the  insane  men,  inside  a  nice  court  with  grass  and  trees 
and  a  trained  attendant  in  charge;  all  the  patients  decently 
clad  and  looking  well  cared  for.  When  Wright  congratulated  the 
commissioners  upon  what  they  had  done  one  of  them  pointed  to 
me  and  said  “that  man  came  and  told  us  what  we  ought  to  do 
and  we  did  it”. 

During  my  experience  in  inspecting  institutions,  I  saw  many 
exhibitions  of  man’s  inhumanity  to  man,  but  the  most  shocking 
sight  I  ever  beheld  was  in  a  jail  in  the  Southwestern  part  of  the 
state.  The  cells  were  back  to  back  in  two  tiers,  the  upper  ones 
approached  by  corridors  of  iron  grating.  The  cells  on  one  side 
of  the  upper  tier  were  assigned  to  female  prisoners.  The  place 
was  over-crowded  with  a  group  of  men  rather  worse  apparently 
than  the  average.  These  had  the  run  of  the  corridors  on  both 
sides.  On  the  women’s  tier  was  an  old  gray-haired,  insane 
woman,  waiting  to  be  taken  to  the  hospital  as  soon  as  there 
should  be  room  for  her.  She  had  been  waiting  for  several  weeks. 
She  was  violently  excited,  had  stripped  off  her  clothing  and  was 
parading  up  and  down  the  corridor  screaming  and  cursing  at  the 
men  who  were  laughing  and  jeering  at  the  poor  creature  and 
increasing  her  excitement.  I  told  the  sheriff  what  I  thought  of 
him  for  allowing  such  a  horrible  thing  to  occur  in  an  institution 
for  which  he  was  responsible,  using  language  a  little  stronger 


114 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


than  was  common  and  made  him  remove  the  poor  thing  to  a  room 
in  his  own  house.  Then  I  telegraphed  the  circumstances  in  full 
to  the  superintendent  of  the  proper  hospital  who  answered  with 
a  prompt  wire  to  the  sheriff  to  bring  her  in  at  once. 

In  one  of  the  Northern  counties,  a  district  rather  above  the 
average  for  wealth  and  intelligence,  a  man  was  kept  in  a  cage  in 
an  outhouse.  The  cage  was  of  heavy  oak  bars  bolted  together, 
there  was  no  door.  It  was  just  long  enough  for  him  to  lie,  just 
high  enough  for  him  to  stand.  He  had  been  in  it  three  years 
without  a  bath  or  a  change  of  clothing.  He  was  supposed  to  be 
a  dangerous  maniac,  so  he  was  treated  as  one  would  treat  a 
raging  wolf  which  must  not  be  killed.  The  present  superintend¬ 
ent  had  found  him  in  the  cage  when  he  took  possession  two  years 
earlier  and  blamed  his  predecessor.  It  was  the  work  of  a  cow¬ 
ardly  ignorant  official.  I  made  such  a  statement  of  the  case  to 
the  physician  at  the  Northern  hospital  in  which  district  the 
county  was,  that  the  poor  creature  was  quickly  removed  to  Long- 
cliff.  There  I  saw  him  three  months  later,  clean,  shaven,  neatly 
dressed,  sitting  on  a  cobblers  bench  cobbling  shoes  for  the 
patients,  a  harmless  useful  patient.  He  had  a  fixed  delusion 
which  nothing  could  cure  that  some  malign  power  which  he 
called  “they”  would  kill  him  if  he  went  out  of  doors,  so  if  people 
tried  to  make  him  go  he  would  fight  for  his  life. 

For  such  extreme  cases  it  was  possible  to  get  quick  action 
but  there  were  many  bad  but  not  quite  so  desperate  and  for 
many  months  my  visits  to  the  asylums  and  jails  involved  seeing 
distressing  sights,  even  in  institutions  where  the  officials  were 
doing  the  best  they  could.  No  one  hailed  with  more  joy  than  I 
the  opening  of  the  additional  hospitals  in  1890  and  1891. 


Chapter  Six 


ADVENTURES  AMONG  CRIMINALS 
The  Prison  North 

The  Northern  prison  at  Michigan  City  when  I  began  inspect¬ 
ing,  was  in  the  hands  of  an  able  man  of  the  old,  prison-warden 
type.  His  work  with  convicts  was  to  hold  them  securely  to 
feed  them  as  cheaply  as  consisted  with  a  working  degree  of 
health  and  to  make  the  contracted  labor  pay  the  running 
expenses,  including  not  only  minor  repairs  but  extensive  improve¬ 
ments.  That  he  did  successfully.  It  never  entered  his  mind  that 
he  had  any  other  duties  to  the  convicts.  That  any  criminal  could 
be  restored  to  society  as  a  fairly  decent  citizen,  was  beyond  his 
imagination.  To  him  the  prison  was  a  place  of  punishment  for 
those  who  have  broken  the  law  and  nothing  else. 

In  deference  to  popular  clamor  which  he  thought  foolish,  he 
had  abolished  punishment  by  the  cat-o-nine  tails  and  substituted 
the  dark  cell  on  bread  and  water,  barely  enough  of  each  to  sup¬ 
port  life.  The  men  went  to  the  “solitary”  for  all  kinds  of  offenses, 
talking  in  line,  passing  any  object  to  a  fellow  prisoner,  impudence 
to  a  guard,  attempting  to  escape,  failing  in  his  task,  breaking  a 
tool  in  the  shop,  assaulting  a  guard  or  fellow  prisoner,  destroying 
clothing,  sodomy,  disobedience  to  a  foreman;  almost  anything 
from  whispering  to  manslaughter.  Except  for  very  grave  offenses 
the  culprit  stayed  in  the  solitary  only  until  he  would  “come 
down”,  i.  e.  profess  repentance  and  promise  amendment.  The 
guard  who  had  been  his  accuser  was  also  his  jailer.  He  had  to 
go  each  morning  after  breakfast  to  the  door  of  the  dark  cell  and 
ask  the  prisoner  if  he  would  behave.  The  interview  for  the  first 

few  days  was  usually  as  follows :  “Well  you - son  of  a - 

will  you  behave?”  Answer  from  within,  “go  to  - you  - ”. 

Whereupon  the  guard  would  report  to  the  deputy :  “Brown  won’t 
come  down;  he  is  as  impudent  as  hell,”  and  the  deputy  would 

(ii 


116 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


say,  “leave  him  be  a  while,  he’ll  soon  have  enough”.  The  timid 
prisoner,  easily  subdued,  got  off  cheaply  by  a  mild  answer  to 
the  guard’s  abuse,  but  the  man  of  spirit  would  endure  the  cold 
cell,  without  shoes  or  coat,  a  bare  board  between  him  and  the 
stone  floor,  in  pitch  darkness,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  often  for 
many  days.  It  is  no  wonder  that  sometimes  the  poor  wretch 
was  carried  from  the  solitary  to  the  hospital  and  soon  to  the 
graveyard  ;*  especially  when  you  remember  that  next  to  syphilis, 
tuberculosis  was  and  still  is  the  prison  disease. 

Another  concession  to  popular  foolishness  as  the  warden 
thought,  was  a  night-school  which  the  convicts  might  attend  if 
they  wished  and  there  was  room.  There  were  about  eight  hun¬ 
dred  prisoners  and  the  school  room  seated  eighty  so  that  there 
was  always  a  long  list  of  would-be  students.  Many  wished  to 
learn,  but  some  wanted  the  change  even  for  an  hour  in  the 
evening  twice  a  week,  from  the  intolerable  dreariness  of  the 
cells.  The  chaplain  aided  by  some  prisoners,  was  the  teacher 
and  was  very  indignant  when  I  suggested  that  by  having  school 
four  evenings  instead  of  two  each  week  more  scholars  could  be 
accommodated. 

The  prison  food  was  of  the  coarsest,  but  it  was  fairly  abun¬ 
dant.  The  meat  supply  has  been  mentioned  on  page  98  in  dis¬ 
cussing  the  slop  contract.  The  labor  was  all  on  the  contract 
plan  and  is  discussed  on  another  page.  With  very  few  excep¬ 
tions  some  notable  ones  but  very  few,  men  who  went  to  that 
prison  in  those  old,  bad  days,  came  out  worse,  physically,  men¬ 
tally,  and  morally,  for  their  imprisonment.  After  my  first  two 
years  experience  of  inspection  it  was  my  deliberate  conviction 
that  the  evils  of  the  prison  and  jail  systems  were  so  great  that 
on  the  whole  humanity  would  be  the  gainer  if  the  state  made  no 
attempt  to  punish  crime. 

In  the  Spring  of  1891  a  new  warden  took  charge  of  the  North¬ 
ern  prison  and  some  improvements  followed.  By  this  time  the 
Board  of  State  Charities  was  so  generally  recognized  as  a  useful 
and  permanent  arm  of  the  government  that  it  seemed  worth 
while  to  placate  the  secretary  in  his  capacity  as  inspector,  and 
even  to  ask  his  advice.  One  notable  change  was  in  the  treatment 

•This  is  given  on  the  testimony  of  an  ex-deputy  warden  who  deplored 
the  change  from  flogging  as  being  inhuman. 


Adventures  with  the  Criminals 


117 


of  the  inspector  himself.  Under  the  former  warden  I  had  been 
allowed  access  to  all  parts  of  the  plant  but  always  with  an 
escort,  I  might  accost  a  convict  and  the  convict  might  answer; 
but  the  official  escort  always  heard  the  conversation  and  no  man 

Kf 

was  permitted  to  speak  to  me  unless  spoken  to. 

Under  the  new  regime  I  went  where  I  would  alone;  every 
prisoner  was  allowed  to  speak  to  me  in  private,  either  at  the 
door  of  his  cell  or  in  the  shop  or  the  dining  room.  While  for 
nearly  two  years  I  had  never  had  a  remark  volunteered;  on  my 
first  visit  under  the  new  warden  nearly  two  hundred  men  had 
something  to  say,  and  T  began  to  think  I  would  soon  see  things 
from  the  convict’s  viewpoint. 

Next  to  complaints  about  food  requests  for  help  to  a  pardon 
were  the  most  frequent.  Some  of  these  had  some  merit  on  their 
face  and  T  took  them  to  the  Governor;  but  he  said,  “Mr.  Johnson 
I  have  six  hundred  pardon  applications  on  file  and  I  have  a  clerk 
who  does  little  else  than  attend  to  them;  you  must  not  meddle 
in  the  pardon  business”.  The  old  Governor  meant  it  as  a  reproof 
but  he  was  really  doing  me  a  kindness  for  my  whole  time  would 
soon  have  been  taken  up  if  T  had  tried  to  ascertain  the  merits 
of  even  a  few  of  the  cases  presented. 

One  interesting  pardon  case  I  did  advise  about.  George  Shep¬ 
pard,  a  boy  of  eighteen  when  convicted,  had  been  with  a  street 
gang,  breaking  open  an  outside  news-stand  at  a  railroad  station, 
and  stealing  some  cigars  and  candy.  The  offense  was  probably 
larceny  but  the  prosecutor  called  it  burglary.  The  judge  gave  the 
poor  devil  five  years,  whereupon  he  cursed  him  in  court  and 
threatened  vengeance  when  he  got  out.  On  that  the  judge  changed 
the  sentence  to  fourteen  years,  the  maximum  for  burglary. 

The  boy  had  never  had  a  chance,  never  a  decent  home,  his 
father  a  drunkard,  his  mother  a  wanton.  He  was  illiterate. 
Going  to  prison  changed  him.  He  went  to  the  night  school  and 
poor  as  it  was  he  learned  to  read  and  write.  He  worked  in  the 
hosiery  shop  was  a  quick  operator  made  overtime  and  saved  the 
few  cents  they  paid  him. 

The  guard  in  his  shop,  who  was  a  man  of  a  quality  that  was 
not  common  among  prison  officials  in  those  days,  called  my  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  boy  and  told  me  his  story.  On  a  later  visit  he  told 
me  George  was  slipping,  was  discontented,  unhappy,  only  barely 


118 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


doing  his  task.  I  talked  with  him  and  the  boy  confessed  that  he 
was  in  despair.  Over  four  years  of  the  five  which  he  believed  it 
was  just  for  him  to  serve  had  gone,  but  he  had  almost  ten  years 
more  to  look  forward  to  and  that  seemed  a  life-time,  he  had  no 
friends  and  so  no  hope  of  a  pardon. 

I  told  him  he  was  mistaken,  that  he  had  one  good  friend  who 
had  the  power  to  pardon  him,  namely  the  Governor,  who  was  a 
good-hearted  man.  I  said,  “George,  write  a  letter  to  the  Gov¬ 
ernor,  tell  him  your  story,  say  you  have  learned  to  read  and 
write  and  to  work  here  and  that  if  he  will  pardon  you  when  the 
five  years  is  up  you  will  be  a  good  citizen.”  George  took  the 
advice  and  the  last  official  act  of  that  Governor  was  signing  his 
pardon. 

Another  case  is  worth  telling.  The  Governor  received  a.  letter 
which  purported  to  be  from  a  prisoner  making  grave  accusations 
against  the  management.  It  was  signed  “Henry  W.  King”  had 
been  posted  in  Michigan  City  and  the  writer  declared  that  a 
friendly  guard  would  smuggle  it  out  for  him;  (all  prisoners  mail 
is  strictly  censored.)  On  my  next  visit  I  asked  the  warden  as 
to  the  character  of  King,  not  mentioning  the  letter.  I  was  told 
that  Henry  was  a  model  prisoner  and  was  employed  in  a  respon¬ 
sible  job  on  the  cliair-shop  contract. 

This  was  after  I  had  been  made  free  of  the  prison  so  that  a 
private  interview  was  possible.  King  denied  any  knowledge  of 
the  letter  and  said  he  thought  it  had  probably  been  written  by  an 
ex-convict.  When  asked  why  the  writer  should  forge  his  name 
he  said  that  was  evidently  to  gain  credence  for  the  story;  the 
Governor  would  naturally  ask  the  warden  what  kind  of  a  man 
the  writer  was  and  would  learn  that  he  was  a  good  prisoner  and 
probably  trustworthy. 

King’s  intelligence  and  apparent  honesty  impressed  me  so  that 
I  studied  his  case  and  found  an  evident  miscarriage  of  justice. 
He  was  sentenced  for  life  for  manslaughter;  while  he  had  been 
guilty  at  the  most  of  disorderly  conduct.  He  had  really  been 
acting  in  self  defense  when  the  accident  occurred  which  caused 
a  death.  Henry’s  only  friend  was  a  sister  but  she  was  spending 
all  her  time  and  money  working  for  a  pardon  which  she  gained 
a  few  months  later. 


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119 


Before  the  pardon  came  I  had  gained  a  great  deal  of  infor¬ 
mation  and  good  advice  on  prison  matters  from  King  and  we 
were  good  friends.  A  prison  is  sometimes  a  good  place  to  make 
friends  in.  A  few  years  later  I  met  him  on  Calhoun  St.,  Ft. 
Wayne,  well  dressed  in  a  somewhat  far  western  style  looking  well 
and  prosperous.  We  met  as  old  friends.  In  reply  to  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  where  he  lived  and  what  he  did  he  said  “I  live  in  Wyo¬ 
ming.  I  am  sheriff  of  Laramie  County.  I  am  in  Allen  County 
now  visiting  my  old  home.”  I  said  “you  know  how  to  treat  a 
prisoner  don’t  you?”  and  he  replied  “you  bet  I  do  and  I  don’t 
have  any  trouble  with  my  fellows  anyway”. 

Contract  Labor. 

Among  the  subjects  it  was  necessary  to  study  in  my  capacity 
as  prison  inspector  and  secretary  of  the  state  board,  was  prison 
labor  and  the  more  I  studied  it  in  the  prisons  the  more  con¬ 
vinced  I  became  that  the  system  of  contract  labor  was  essen¬ 
tially  vicious  and  could  not  but  work  harm.  It  had  the  merits 
of  making  the  prisoners  earn  their  living  and  of  compelling  the 
habit  of  hard  work;  and  these  merits  are  real.  It  is  as  just  to 
require  a  man  to  earn  his  living  in  prison  as  out  of  it.  But  its 
effects  on  the  convict’s  moral  nature  were  wholly  bad.  The  men 
resented  being  worked  for  the  contractor’s  profit.  They  felt 
themselves  abused  and  defrauded.  They  worked  with  a  grudge. 
Their  labor  was  a  curse,  not  a  blessing. 

The  foreman  in  the  shop  came  between  the  convicts  and  a 
warden  who  might  wish  to  influence  them  for  good.  The  fore¬ 
man’s  job  depended  on  getting  the  most  possible  profit  out  of 
the  shop,  he  had  no  sympathy  to  waste  on  the  men.  The  guards 
felt  the  influence  of  the  contract.  It  was  their  duty  to  protect 
the  men  from  overwork  or  abuse,  but  they  were  usually  inclined 
to  side  with  the  contractor  who  made  it  worth  their  while. 
Such  things  have  been  known  as  direct  bribery  of  a  warden  or 
his  deputy  to  influence  them  in  allowing  the  task  to  be  set  high 
so  that  the  amount  earned  by  overtime  should  be  small ;  and 
political  influence  in  favor  of  a  warden  who  stood  in  with  a 
contractor  was  common. 

It  was  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  prevent  some  of  the 
weaker  ones  from  being  overworked.  The  labor  had  little  trade- 


120 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


educational  value,  since  few  trades  were  conducted  alike  in 
prison  and  outside.  Convicts  were  sometimes  exposed  to  unsani¬ 
tary  working  conditions,  as  for  instance  in  the  chair  shop,  where 
sand  belts  were  used,  causing  dust  which  brought  on  pulmonary 
disease.  At  a  time  when  the  chair  shop  at  Michigan  City  was 
horribly  dusty  I  visited  the  great  workhouse  in  Detroit  where 
the  same  kind  of  machinery  was  used,  and  found  it  absolutely 
sanitary,  fans  being  used  at  each  machine  to  clear  the  air  of 
dust.  The  difference  was  that  at  the  Indiana  prison  it  was  a 
contract  labor  shop,  in  Detroit  the  work  was  on  public  account. 

All  these  things  together  made  contract  labor  utterly  pre¬ 
ventive  of  reformation  of  prisoners.  It  was  also  unfair  and 
injurious  to  free  labor.  By  massing  a  large  amount  of  cheap 
prison  labor  in  one  industry  the  trade  was  ruined  for  the  free 
workman.  For  instance  the  making  of  tight  barrels,  formerly  a 
profitable  occupation  for  semi-skilled  men,  was  destroyed  for 
them  by  prison  contract  competition.  No  wonder  the  Trades 
Unions  opposed  it  bitterly. 

Some  of  the  contractors  were  honorable  and  benevolent  men 
but  they  trusted  their  superintendents  and  abstained  from  know¬ 
ing  too  much  of  their  methods.  Occasionally  there  would  be  a 
contractor  of  a  different  spirit.  One  such  for  a  time  had  the 
shoe-contract  at  Michigan  City.  He  notified  the  convicts  who 
learned  the  trade  in  his  prison  shop,  that  he  would  lend  them  a 
hand  when  their  time  was  out  and  in  his  free  labor  factory  in 
Chicago  he  did  employ  some  ex-convicts  and  stood  by  them  when 
his  other  workmen  threatened  to  strike  against  them.  But  such 
men  as  he  are  rare.  People  are  in  business  to  make  money  and 
the  most  liberal  and  humane  employer  has  to  compete  with  those 
of  a  different  kind.  There  are  few  of  the  evils  which  arise  out  of 
industry,  especially  out  of  those  industries  which  create  poverty 
as  one  of  their  by-products,  which  have  not  their  source  in  desire 
for  gain. 

All  during  my  time  as  inspector  contract  labor  prevailed  in 
both  prisons  and  when  our  board’s  work  began  it  was  even  used 
to  a  small  extent  in  the  institutions  for  the  deaf  and  the  blind. 
One  of  the  reforms  we  accomplished  at  the  legislative  session  of 
1891  was  by  an  act  which  did  away  with  it  in  those  schools. 


Adventures  with  the  Criminals 


121 


The  great  prison  reform  by  which  the  noble  declaration  of 
the  state  constitution*  was  made  into  statute  law,  was  still  in 
the  future.  That  was  one  of  the  many  Reforms  which  I  saw  and 
had  the  privilege  of  helping  bring  about  after  I  had  left  the 
service  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities  for  other  employment. 

The  Prison  South 

In  charge  of  the  southern  prison  at  Jeffersonville  was  a  man 
who  differed  widely  from  the  usual  prison  warden  type.  Without 
much  culture  he  had  imagination  and  unbounded  humanity. 
Under  a  rough  exterior  he  was  one  of  the  most  sentimental  of 
men,  but  if  you  had  accused  him  of  it  he  would  have  laughed  at 
you.  Withal  he  was  absolutely  without  reverence  for  the  estab¬ 
lished  order.  Nothing  was  of  value  to  him  that  could  not  prove 
itself.  That  a  method  was  old  or  respectable,  or  universally 
believed  in,  had  no  effect  on  him ;  and  he  was  positive  to  obsti¬ 
nacy,  so  that  when  he  had  made  up  his  mind  only  some  very 
certain  and  concrete  evidence  of  the  results  of  an  error  could 
make  him  admit  that  he  had  been  mistaken. 

The  prison  when  he  took  charge  was  in  a  deplorable  condition. 
For  years  it  had  been  a  political  football,  in  the  control  of  grasp¬ 
ing,  grafting,  self-seeking,  political  henchmen.  The  horrible  state 
of  affairs  which  had  been  disclosed  a  few  years  earlier  by  a  com¬ 
mittee  of  Quakers,  who  had  secured  admission  and  made  the 
facts  known ;  and  which  resulted  in  the  creation  of  the  women’s 
prison ;  had  indeed  been  somewhat  remedied.  At  least  the  gross 
immoralities  which  came  from  putting  women  prisoners  under 
the  sole  control  of  male  guards  no  longer  existed.  But  filth  and 
disorder  were  in  every  part. 

Jim  Patten,  as  his  friends  called  him,  and  he  had  many  and 
almost  as  many  enemies,  was  just  the  man  for  the  job.  Honest, 
determined,  energetic  he  surely  did  clean  things  up.  When  I 
began  my  visits  he  had  done  many  things  and  he  did  many  more. 
The  first  thing  he  abolished  was  the  cat.  He  said  “no  man  shall 


•The  18th  section  of  the  hill  of  rights  in  the  constitution  of  1816; 
repeated  in  that  of  1846  reads ;  “The  basis  of  the  penal  code  shall  he  the 
principle  of  reformation  and  not  of  vindictive  Justice.”  It  was  97  years 
before  that  noble  clause  was  wholly  embodied  in  statute  law,  by  the  act 
which  created  the  state  penal  farm. 


122 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


be  flogged  while  I  am  warden”.  The  convicts  were  all  close 
shaved  as  to  face,  close  cropped  as  to  head.  Patten  said  “what’s 
the  use  of  it,  only  to  degrade  them  and  make  them  feel  bad  ?”  It 
had  the  sole  merit  of  cleanliness.  He  proclaimed  to  the  men, 
“hereafter  wear  your  hair  and  beard  as  you  like,  only  not  too 
long.  But  keep  clean.  If  I  find  a  lousy  head  I’ll  have  it  shaved.” 
Then  the  lock  step,  that  vile  invention  which  marks  a  convict 
for  life.  The  man  who  has  shuffled  in  that  devilish  march  for  a 
year  or  two  never  recovers  from  it,  he  can  be  picked  out  on  the 
street  anywhere  by  an  old  prison  guard.  Patton  said  “no  more 
lockstep,  march  in  two’s  like  soldiers”. 

When  it  came  to  the  stripes  he  hesitated.  The  old  pattern 
was  the  whitest  white  stripe  and  the  blackest  black  possible.  He 
hated  the  zebra  uniform  for  “his  boys”  as  he  always  called  them, 
but  he  felt  they  must  have  a  distinctive  dress  so  that  if  they 
escaped  they  would  be  known.  But  in  buying  the  striped  goods 
he  chose  the  darkest  light  grey  stripe  and  the  lightest  dark  so  the 
contrast  should  not  be  glaring. 

The  silent  system  had  always  prevailed.  It  was  a  breach  of 
discipline  for  one  convict  to  speak  to  another,  in  the  shops,  the 
mess  hall,  or  in  the  cells ;  and  of  course  singing  or  whistling  was 
strictly  forbidden.  Patten  introduced  the  “free  hour”  in  the 
evening;  the  convicts  were  allowed  to  converse,  sing  or  play  the 
violin  or  the  mouth  harp.  Several  of  the  convicts  were  musicians 
and  formed  an  orchestra  which  rendered  really  good  music 
together  in  the  chapel  after  their  practice  as  individuals  in  their 
cells. 

But  the  greatest  reform  was  in  the  personal  management. 
The  old  rule,  as  in  most  prisons,  was  that  all  immediate  contact 
of  the  men  was  with  a  guard  or  deputy.  The  convicts  often 
declared  that  if  they  could  only  talk  once  to  the  “old  man”,  they 
could  get  justice  when  guards  were  unfair.  Patten  was  not  com¬ 
pletely  emancipated  from  politics,  he  had  to  give  the  job  of  dep¬ 
uty  warden  to  a  favorite  of  some  statesman ;  but  he  picked  out  a 
good-natured  old  man  and  made  the  job  almost  a  sinecure.  He 
said  to  me  “what  do  I  want  with  a  deputy  ?  I  am  the  one  that  is 
responsible  and  I  want  to  know  my  boys”.  So  he  went  among 
the  convicts  in  the  shops  and  in  the  dining  room.  Anyone  who 
wished  might  speak  to  him  and  he  gave  them  a  hearing  and  some 


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123 


kind  of  an  answer,  often  a  joke,  sometimes  a  reproof,  never  a 
snub. 

Sometimes  his  jokes  got  him  into  trouble.  A  notorious 
malingerer,  who  had  been  refused  release  of  work  by  the  doctor, 
complained  to  the  warden  telling  him  that  his  liver  was  very  bad. 
Patten  said  “Well  Billy,  if  that’s  the  case  we’ll  cut  your  liver 
out”.  At  a  legislative  investigation  some  years  later  the  con¬ 
vict  swore  that  Patten  had  threatened  to  “cut  his  liver  out”. 

Patten  hated  dirt,  waste,  laziness  and  extravagance.  He  had 
no  use  for  a  slop  contract.  He  used  to  say  that  prison  slop 
meant  poor  buying  or  else  bad  cooking.  He  said  “I  buy  grub 
for  my  boys  to  eat,  not  to  feed  hogs”.  His  men  were  better  fed 
than  those  in  the  Northern  prison  yet  the  per  capita  cost  of  food 
was  two  cents  a  day  less.  A  favorite  dish  was  pork  and  beans 
which  he  insisted  must  be  baked  many  hours,  not  the  sloppy 
mess  often  given  in  institutions.  The  guards  and  foremen  who 
had  their  own  dining  room,  would  always  ask  for  some  of  the 
convicts’  food  on  pork  and  bean  day.  He  used  to  say  “if  anything 
is  cheap  in  Indiana  it’s  grub.  These  boys  of  mine  have  a  hard 
enough  time;  at  least  I  can  give  them  plenty  to  eat;  and  if  the 
steward  does  not  know  how  to  make  it  taste  good  I’ll  fire  him.” 
Hje  had  a  steward  who  was  equal  to  his  demand  and  kept  the 
cooks  on  their  toes.  A  batch  of  scorched  hominy  or  oatmeal  was 
a  serious  matter  for  the  cooks.  I  got  many  lessons  in  institu¬ 
tion  cooking  in  the  prison  which  I  used  later  when  I  had  charge 
of  the  school  at  Fort  Wayne. 

One  of  Patten’s  first  reforms  had  been  to  abolish  flogging, 
but  a  year  or  two  later  he  was  confronted  by  a  situation  which 
it  seemed  could  only  be  met  by  corporal  punishment.  A  brutal 
and  powerful  convict,  working  in  the  molding  shop,  had  assaulted 
a  guard  with  a  “potstick”,  nearly  killing  him.  (A  potstick  is  an 
iron  bar  used  as  a  handle  in  carrying  molten  iron  in  pots  from 
the  cupola  to  the  molds.)  The  man  had  always  been  unruly  and 
was  feared  by  everyone  in  the  prison.  He  had  been  in  the  dark 
cell  on  several  occasions,  each  time  for  an  assault  on  a  fellow 
convict,  but  that  kind  of  punishment  held  no  terror  for  him. 

The  assault  happened  on  the  evening  that  the  trustees  had 
arrived  for  the  monthly  board  meeting,  and  they,  as  well  as  the 
guards  and  deputy,  insisted  that  nothing  but  a  severe  flogging 


124  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

would  have  any  effect.  But  Patten  declared  against  it;  said  he 
had  not  and  would  not  consent  to  whip  any  man;  that  it  was 
meeting  brutality  with  brutality;  that  it  was  degrading  to  the 
whipped  and  the  whipper.  The  whole  evening  was  spent  in  the 
dispute.  The  next  morning,  after  a  sleepless  night,  he  broke 
down  and  said  he  would  take  the  trustees’  advice;  and  accord¬ 
ingly  the  convict  was  flogged,  not  indeed  with  the  cat  but  with  a 
buggy  whip.  The  warden  did  the  job  himself,  saying  he  would 
not  compel  a  subordinate  to  so  humiliate  himself,  that  if  such 
degradation  was  to  be  incurred,  as  he  was  responsible  he  must 
suffer  it.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  result  was  salutary ;  the 
offender  was  a  markedly  different  man  thereafter. 

Some  time  afterwards  I  was  discussing  prison  punishment 
with  Jim  Lee,  one  of  the  convicts,  and  to  my  surprise  Jim  said 
that  he  and  all  the  men  in  the  prison  who  had  any  sense,  were 
very  glad  when  the  warden  had  given  in,  he  said  such  a  man 
was  a  danger  not  only  to  the  guards  but  to  every  one.  I  said, 
“why  are  you  afraid  of  him,  could  you  not  take  your  own  part?” 
to  which  Jim  answered  “what  would  a  prison  be  like  where  a 
convict  must  take  his  own  part  against  such  a  man  ?  Hell  would 
be  no  name  for  it”. 

Lee  was  one  from  whom  I  got  much  information  and  some 
good  advice,  which  I  passed  on,  carefully  camouflaged,  to  the 
warden.  He  was  a  “lifer”,  a  competent  engineer  in  charge  of 
the  heating  and  lighting.  He  had  belonged  to  the  celebrated 
“Archer  Gang”,  which  for  years  terrorized  a  string  of  counties 
in  the  south  central  part  of  the  state,  and  had  at  last  been 
broken  up.  Jim  and  his  brother  Bill  had  been  among  the  leaders. 
Bill,  also  a  lifer,  was  foreman  of  the  saddle-tree  shop  and  had 
invented  some  machinery  which  the  contractor  had  patented. 
The  Lees  were  two  of  the  best  prisoners  and  each  had  a  sincere 
respect  and  admiration  for  their  warden. 

After  the  rule  was  once  broken  flogging  did  occur  occasionally 
and  some  popular  feeling  arose  against  it.  At  the  legislative 
session  of  1893,  a  bill  on  the  subject  which  I  drafted,  became 
law.  While  it  did  not  prohibit  corporal  punishment,  it  provided 
saf e-guards  against  abuse  which  included  an  orderly  trial  with 
recorded,  sworn  testimony;  a  lapse  of  time  between  the  offense 
and  the  punishment  so  that  no  man  could  be  whipped  in  the  heat 


Adventures  with  the  Criminals 


125 


of  passion;  the  flogging  to  be  witnessed  by  both  the  doctor  and 
the  chaplain,  and  a  writen  record  kept,  signed  by  these  officers 
and  by  the  warden,  and  regularly  inspected  by  the  secretary  of 
the  Board  of  State  Charities.  The  result  of  this  law  which  was 
strictly  enforced,  was  that  corporal  punishment  became  practi¬ 
cally  obsolete. 

Another  story  told  by  Jim  Lee,  was  of  Patten’s  second  Fourth 
of  July.  Of  course  the  Glorious  Fourth  was  a  holiday,  and  a 
holiday  in  prison  is  as  bad  for  the  convicts  as  a  Sunday.  It 
means  staying  in  the  cells  all  day  instead  of  going  to  the  shops 
to  work,  and  is  usually  hated.  The  warden  marched  the  men 
from  breakfast  to  the  chapel,  gave  them  a  talk,  had  the  prisoner’s 
orchestra  play  for  them  and  a  couple  of  convicts  give  recitations. 
Then  he  said  “now  boys,  after  dinner  I’m  going  to  give  you  the 
freedom  of  the  yard,  provided  you  will  all  promise  to  make  no 
bad  breaks”.  Of  course  the  promise  was  given  enthusiastically; 
to  be  free  for  half  a  day,  out  under  the  sky  and  the  trees;  for 
there  were  several  big  maples  and  some  grass  in  the  yard;  and 
be  able  to  talk  all  you  liked  was  a  wonderful  treat.  I  asked  Lee 
if  any  bad  breaks  were  made  and  he  answered  “no,  some  of  us 
old-timers  were  a  little  leary  some  of  the  fresh  ones  might  get 
gay  and  we  kept  our  eyes  on  them,  if  they  had  tried  a  break  we 
would  have  strung  them  up  to  the  big  maple  out  there”.* 

Of  course  not  all  the  men  appreciated  their  warden  as  Jim 
Lee  did.  Many  of  them  had  not  had  Lee’s  experience  under  the 
old  regime.  But  on  the  whole  he  had  less  trouble  with  them  than 
is  usual  in  such  places.  He  did  his  level  best  to  give  his  “boys” 
a  square  deal  and  most  of  them  realized  it  and  responded. 

He  used  to  say  “there  are  only  a  few  real  crooks  among  my 
boys.  Most  of  them  got  into  trouble  by  accident,  by  drink,  or 
bad  company,  or  some  one  ill-used  them,  or  some  prostitute  made 
them  steal  for  her.  If  we  use  them  right,  make  them  behave  and 
work  hard  while  they  are  here  they  wont  come  back.  I  only  wish 
folks  would  give  them  a  fair  show  when  they  get  out.”  Patten 

♦The  difference  in  thirty  years  was  emphasized  to  my  mind  the  last 
time  I  visited  that  institution,  now  the  Indiana  Reformatory  for  Adults. 
It  was  Saturday  afternoon  and  the  whole  population  was  out  in  the  yard, 
now  much  enlarged,  to  witness  a  base  ball  match  between  two  convict 
nines.  However  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  old,  futile,  repressive 
methods  still  prevail  in  many  places. 


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Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


had  a  profound  contempt  for  dilletante  prison  reformers,  and 
when  he  attended  the  National  Prison  Association  he  freely 
expressed  his  opinions  and  was  not  popular  with  the  advanced 
scientists,  who  talked  of  criminal  psychology,  recidivism  and 
other  isms,  which  he  called  a  lot  of  d - d  humbug. 

While  he  loudly  resented  any  advice  as  to  his  management 
he  was  really  very  responsive  to  suggestion.  When  I  would  sug¬ 
gest  an  improvement  his  usual  answer  was  “did  you  ever  run 
a  prison?  Were  you  ever  a  warden  or  a  deputy?  Then  what  in 
thunder  do  you  know  about  it?”  Then  I  would  persist  and  make 
him  listen,  in  spite  of  his  ridicule  and  invective.  On  a  subsequent 
visit  he  would  show  me  something  identical  with,  or  suggested  by, 
what  I  had  proposed,  as  a  new  scheme  which  he  had  thought  out. 
And  in  this  he  was  quite  honest.  When  it  was  suggested  to  him 
from  the  outside  he  rejected  it  as  foolish.  Later  when  the 
thought  came  to  him,  he  quite  forgot  the  suggestion  and  believed 
it  original.  And  I  am  proud  to  remember  that  I  never  once  said 
“I  told  you  so”.  My  object  was  to  get  the  right  thing  done ;  the 
credit  belonged  to  the  man  who  did  it,  not  to  him  who  proposed  it. 

Patten  made  many  splendid  improvements,  using  convict 
labor  to  a  then  unheard  of  degree.  He  built  a  magnificent  wall 
to  replace  an  old  wooden  stockade;  a  sewer  to  the  Ohio  river, 
running  under  the  Penna  railroad  tracks,  all  with  convict  labor; 
planning,  surveying,  and  directing  the  job  himself.  He  told  with 
great  glee  a  story  of  the  sewer  building  when  the  work  began 
outside  the  walls.  He  noticed  a  lot  of  townsmen  watching  the 
convicts  at  work.  After  a  day  or  two,  as  the  thing  persisted,  he 
said  to  one  of  his  convict  foremen,  “say  Bob,  what’s  that  bunch 
of  civilians  doing  hanging  around?”  Bob  answered,  “why  don’t 
you  know  warden,  they  are  watching  for  us  to  make  a  break,  so 
they  can  get  $10  a  piece  for  catching  us,  but  we’ll  fool  them,  we 
aren't  going  to  break  away.”  There  was  the  usual  standing  offer 
of  $10  reward  for  the  arrest  of  an  escaping  convict ;  and  his  men 
stood  by  him,  as  men,  even  criminals,  will  stand  by  a  man  who 
treats  them  right  and  trusts  them. 

Jim  Patten  had  many  faults,  he  was  brusque,  obstinate,  some¬ 
times  profane ;  but  he  had  a  clear  head,  a  warm  heart,  a  hatred  for 
meanness,  indomitable  energy  and  perseverence.  He  was  most 
appreciated  by  those  who  knew  him  best.  His  faults  were  on 


Adventures  with  the  Criminals 


127 


the  surface;  you  saw  them  all  at  the  first  interview.  He  was  a 
loyal  and  useful  servant  of  the  state. 

The  County  Jails 

The  institutions  most  needing  improvement  and  those  in 
which  improvement  is  hardest  to  secure  are  the  county  jails. 
When  the  National  Conference  met  in  1875,  two  resolutions  were 
passed,  one  of  them  that  the  county  jails  of  the  U.  S.  are  a 
reproach  to  civilization.  Twenty-four  years  later  I  found  that 
the  indictment  was  still  a  just  one.  One  reason  why  penal  insti¬ 
tutions  of  all  kinds  are  the  last  to  be  improved  is  because  the 
law-makers  and  the  public  are  governed  more  by  sentiment  than 
by  reason.  In  working  on  an  ordinary  legislature  for  institu¬ 
tional  betterments,  the  best  argument  is  not  the  saving  of  money 
nor  the  improvement  of  social  conditions.  These  considerations 
affect  only  a  few.  But  if  you  can  present  the  case  of  many  inno¬ 
cent  victims,  suffering  from  causes  which  the  new  method  pro¬ 
posed  will  relieve,  you  are  more  likely  to  win.  You  may  reach 
the  state’s  pocket-book  thru  the  hearts  more  readily  than  thru 
the  heads  of  those  who  guard  it.  Now  there  is  little  sympathy 
with  prisoners,  even  with  ill-used  ones;  anything  they  suffer  is 
thought  to  serve  them  right.  And  if  some  proposed  plan  looks 
toward  reformation  of  criminals  it  will  meet  with  general  incre¬ 
dulity.  The  opinion  “once  a  thief  always  a  thief”  is  very  general 
and  is  the  greatest  obstacle  to  prison  and  jail  reform ;  so  human 
justice,  so-called,  continues  to  make  that  adage  true. 

I  can  never  forget  my  first  visit  to  the  jail  in  the  county  in 
which  I  was  afterward  to  live  for  many  years.  The  place  was 
filthy  and  crowded.  Men  serving  sentences,  mostly  brief,  some 
of  months,  one  of  a  year ;  many  waiting  trial ;  several  held  as  wit¬ 
nesses;  a  score  of  tramps.  One  man  accused  of  murder  was 
locked  in  a  cell,  but  all  the  rest  doing  as  they  pleased  in  the 
unlocked  cells  and  the  corridors.  The  only  occupations  were 
telling  obscene  stories,  boasting  of  criminal  exploits  and  handling 
a  pack  of  greasy  cards;  there  was  no  employment,  no  discipline. 
And  among  this  horde  of  rascals,  listening  and  learning,  were 
three  little  boys,  nine,  ten  and  eleven  years  of  age,  who  were 
accused  of  incorrigibility  and  waiting  till  the  court  should  sit  in 
September,  it  was  then  July,  to  be  sent  to  the  state’s  school  to  be 


128 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


reformed.  The  state  proposed  to  make  over  three  wayward  boys 
into  good  citizens  and  the  first  part  of  the  process  was  to  plunge 
them  into  a  moral  and  physical  mud-bath  of  two  months  duration. 
Thanks  to  improved  laws  which  the  Board  of  State  Charities 
helped  to  get,  such  a  state  of  things  is  no  longer  possible  in 
Indiana,  but  some  states  still  commit  such  crimes. 

I  found  many  jails  so  unsanitary  as  to  be  a  positive  menace 
to  life  as  well  as  health.  Sometimes  the  condition  was  due  to 
neglect;  often  to  faulty  design;  often  to  bad  construction.  The 
last  place  on  which  the  commissioners  are  willing  to  spend 
money  is  the  jail.  What  was  good  enough  for  their  grandfathers 
is  good  enough  for  them ;  and  if  the  jail  is  a  bad  place  let  people 
keep  out  of  it.  The  annual  reports  of  the  board  each  contained 
a  faithful  account  of  the  condition  of  every  jail.  Each  paper 
usually  copied  the  story  of  its  locality,  but  few  people  cared.  On 
one  occasion  Gov.  Hovey  had  business  in  Peru  and  at  the  court 
house  someone  called  his  attention  to  the  jail.  He  was  duly 
horrified  and  on  his  return  to  the  state  house  sent  his  private 
secretary  to  me,  enquiring  why  the  abominable  condition  of  that 
jail  had  not  been  discovered  and  made  public.  I  gave  him  a  copy 
of  my  last  printed  report  and  told  him  to  ask  the  Governor 
whether  he  thought  it  was  possible  to  use  stronger  language, 
without  profanity,  than  I  had  used  when  I  described  the  Miami 
County  jail. 

The  more  I  saw  of  jails  the  more  clearly  I  realized  that  they 
deserved  the  name  I  had  given  them  “Common  Schools  of  Vice 
and  Recruiting  Stations  for  the  Army  of  Professional  Criminals.” 
I  realized  that  most  of  our  habitual  criminals  are  jail  and  prison 
made.  That  most  of  them  began  not  as  deliberate  but  as  acci¬ 
dental  offenders,  who  might  have  been  saved  to  citizenship  by 
proper  treatment;  that  their  development  into  the  professional 
class  is  partly,  if  not  chiefly,  due  to  our  treatment  of  them. 

Here  is  one  instance  out  of  many  I  have  on  record.  On  a  visit 
to  Henry  County  jail  I  saw  a  noted  burglar  and  safe-blower 
named  “Blinky”  Morgan  with  two  of  his  gang.  The  day  before 
the  visit  the  sheriff  had  just  prevented  their  escape.  There  were 
two  local  boys  of  eighteen  and  twenty  named  Katt  and  Wagner, 
in  for  some  petty  offense.  Blinky  and  his  pals  being  notorious 
for  jail,  as  well  as  safe  breaking,  were  locked  in  their  cells ;  but 


Adventures  with  the  Criminals 


129 


the  other  prisoners  had  the  run  of  the  corridors  and  the  boys 
talked  freely  with  Morgan.  Katt  was  bailed  out.  About  three 
days  later  the  sheriff  saw  a  ladder  under  an  open  window  and 
knew  there  was  something  wrong.  He  took  Wagner  to  his  office 
and  gave  him  the  third  degree ;  whereupon  the  boy  confessed  that 
Blinky  had  promised  to  take  Katt  and  him  into  his  gang  and 
make  men  of  them,  so  when  Katt  was  bailed  out  he  took  a  letter 
from  Morgan  to  a  pal  in  Columbus,  O.,  and  soon  received  by 
express  a  parcel  of  tools  which  he  had  passed  to  Wagner  thru 
the  window  for  Morgan.  The  sheriff  searched  Blinky’s  cell  and 
found  saws,  jimmies  and  files  concealed  in  his  mattress  and  he 
did  not  escape,  as  he  swore  he  would  have  done,  that  night.  For 
that  time  the  boys  were  not  made  burglars,  just  because  Katt  was 
too  lazy  to  remove  the  ladder  he  had  stolen  to  reach  the  window. 

Frequent  visits  and  frank  reports  did  have  some  effect.  Some 
jails  were  kept  cleaner.  In  one  or  two  some  little  attempt  at 
classification  of  prisoners  was  made  to  prevent  the  contamina¬ 
tion  which  had  been  usual.  But  it  was  many  years  before  the 
most  radical  change,  which  was  suggested  in  the  first  report  of 
the  Board,  was  made.  This  was  the  complete  segregation  of 
convicted  persons  serving  sentences,  from  accused  persons  wait¬ 
ing  trial  and  presumably  innocent  until  proved  guilty.  This  great 
reform,  which  was  one  ofthe  many  fine  things  done  during  Amos 
Butler’s  term,  was  chiefly  owing  to  the  board.  It  had  been  out¬ 
lined  in  our  first  report  in  the  following  language.  “Until  an 
accused  person  has  been  convicted ;  the  jail  is  a  place  of  detention 
not  of  punishment.  The  distinction  may  be  made  by  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  system  of  district  workhouses,  each  receiving  sen¬ 
tenced  felons  or  misdemeanants  from  several  counties.” 

It  was  consummated  by  the  legislature  of  1913,  which  created 
the  state  penal  farm  for  short-term  convicts  who  before  that  had 
served  their  time  in  jail.  This  was  the  last,  or  shall  we  say  the 
latest,  step  in  making  the  noble  declaration  of  the  constitution 
into  statute  law.*  1 


♦See  note  on  page  121. 


Chapter  Seven 


> 


ADVENTURES  IN  BOOK-KEEPING 
Statistical  Work 

While  the  most  useful  work  of  a  state  board  concerns  human 
and  humane  interests,  it  has  some  duties  of  a  statistical  nature 
which  are  important.  Fred.  H.  Wines,  secretary  of  the  Illinois 
Board,  when  asked  his  profession  used  to  say  “I  am  a  statisti¬ 
cian^.  When  “Who’s  who”  asked  me  that  question  I  wanted  to 
reply  “I  am  an  asthenontologist”.  But  because  no  one  knows 
what  that  means  I  had  to  say  a  lecturer  and  secretary. 

At  the  National  Conference  in  Grand  Rapids  in  1896,  Dr. 
James  Walk,  then  secretary  of  the  C.  O.  S.  of  Philadelphia,  gave 
us  the  word  “asthenontology”  as  the  name  of  a  science  which 
should  deal  with  all  that  concerns  the  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Correction,  from  the  care  of  a  foundling  to  the  treatment  of 
a  murderer.  He  said  it  was  a  coin  from  the  verbal  mint  of  a  pro¬ 
fessor  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  and  literally  translated 
was  “the  science  of  weak  beings”.  I  accepted  the  word  as  valu¬ 
able,  not  only  as  giving  a  name  to  the  unnamed  but  as  expressing 
a  very  illuminating  principle,  viz,  that  in  all  those  who  come 
under  our  purview  as  social  workers,  it  is  weakness,  not  strength, 
that  brings  them.  Not  the  physical  nor  the  mental  strength  of 
the  burglar  or  the  forger,  but  his  moral  weakness  makes  him  an 
object  of  our  “correction”.  For  many  years  I  have  tried  to  popu¬ 
larize  not  the  word  merely  but  the  principle  it  involves ;  but  out¬ 
side  of  classes  in  the  schools  of  philanthropy  and  a  few  other 
places,  altho  the  principle  is  usually  accepted  as  soon  as  under¬ 
stood,  the  word  has  not  become  current;  and  those  who  have 
accepted  it  at  my  lectures  have  quickly  forgotten  it  afterwards. 
But  I  still  think  it  is  a  useful  addition  to  our  language. 

Of  course  when  organizing  statistical  work  I  started  by  study¬ 
ing  what  other  boards  were  doing.  A  quarterly  statistical  bulletin 

(130) 


Adventures  in  Book-Keeping 


131 


‘  -'-iTrfiifliM 

was  borrowed  with  a  few  improvements  from  the  Minnesota  State 
Board.  Its  first  number  was  in  1890  and  the  sight  of  its  No.  129, 
just  received  at  this  writing,  brings  back  many  memories  of  effort. 
One  of  the  purposes  of  the  bulletin  was  to  enable  the  institutions 
to  compare  themselves  with  each  other,  and  sometimes  with  those 
of  other  states.  Classifications  were  made  of  various  items;  of 
population ;  number  of  employees ;  cost  of  subsistence ;  and  other 
particulars.  These  were  worked  out  by  totals  and  also  by  per 
capitas.  The  figures  were  made  up  from  quarterly  reports  fur¬ 
nished  by  the  institutions. 

When  I  planned  the  bulletin  I  had  already  won  the  confidence 
of  most  of  the  institution  men,  so  that  I  had  no  hesitation  in 
asking  them  for  any  statistics  needed.  But  there  were  one  or 
two  of  the  very  best  managers  who  so  far  had  not  seen  any  spe¬ 
cial  need  of  the  board’s  work  so  far  as  they  were  concerned.  To 
each  of  them,  before  printing  the  blank  forms  for  the  institution 
reports,  I  sent  a  typewritten  copy,  asking  them  to  study  it  and  if 
there  were  any  figures  requested  which  their  bookkeeping  as  it 
was,  or  as  it  could  easily  be  adjusted,  could  not  furnish,  to  let 
me  know.  Of  course  this  appealed  to  the  pride  of  a  good  admin¬ 
istrator  and  they  each  replied  that  they  could  certainly  furnish 
all  statistics  requested;  altho  several  of  them  had  to  make  some 
salutary  changes  in  their  bookkeeping  in  order  to  comply. 

In  classifying  institution  expenditures  one  of  the  headings 
first  adopted  was  “miscellaneous” ;  and  a  sarcastic  editor  said  the 
board’s  expense  accounts  resembled  those  of  the  college  boy, 
whose  “sundries”  were  his  largest  item.  This  criticism  was  met 
by  the  simple  expedient  of  changing  the  heading  to  “office,  domes¬ 
tic  and  outdoor  departments”  which  escaped  comment.  In  the 
course  of  thirty  years  experience  the  bulletin  has  been  somewhat 
revised  and  added  to,  but  its  main  features  are  identical  with 
those  of  the  first  number. 

Another  valuable  statistical  method  was  original  with  the 
Indiana  board.  It  consisted  of  an  alphabetical  card  catalog  of 
the  inmates  of  all  the  institutions.  Beginning  with  those  of 
ninety-two  poor  asylums  and  two  state  hospitals,  the  registration 
contained  about  5,700  names  at  the  end  of  the  first  year.  Other 
institutions  were  added.  The  registration  now  (June  1922)  con¬ 
tains  165,654  names  of  persons  who  are,  or  within  the  past  thirty- 


132  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

one  years  have  been,  inmates  of  the  eighteen  charitable  and  cor¬ 
rectional  state  institutions,  ninety-two  county  poor  asylums  and 
thirty-three  orphan  homes.  It  is  maintained  in  duplicate,  'one  set 
arranged  by  institutions  the  other  alphabetically  and  phonet¬ 
ically.  It  is  the  latter  which  brings  family  names  together.  The 
value  of  this  central  registration  is  greatest  to  the  state  institu¬ 
tions  ;  which  on  registering  their  new  inmates  receive  very  soon  a 
statement  of  family  connections  if  there  are  any  such  on  record, 
which  frequently  throws  a  much  needed  light  on  the  history  of  the 
person  registered  and  the  cause  of  his  trouble. 

The  way  the  registration  worked  and  the  results  of  compari¬ 
son  will  be  seen  by  an  actual  case  at  the  School  for  Feeble 
Minded.  A  new  pupil  Ethel  S - was  a  moron  of  good  appear¬ 

ance,  gentle  manners,  healthy  except  for  a  slight  epileptic  tend¬ 
ency,  and  with  intelligence  only  slightly  below  normal.  Her 
mother  who  had  brought  her  was  a  refined  appearing  tho  not 
highly  educated  woman.  The  family  so  far  as  we  could  judge, 
seemed  rather  above  the  average  of  rural  dwellers.  The  etiological  • 
history  of  the  girl  showed  no  bad  heredity  of  any  kind.  If  I  had 
been  asked  whether  or  not  Ethel  might  take  a  usual  place  in  the 
community,  marry  and  bear  children;  on  the  face  of  the  record 
and  the  apparent  facts,  I  should  have  said  that  if  any  inmate 
could  be  discharged  to  ordinary  life,  she  was  one. 

The  registry  card  was  sent  to  the  state  board  office  and  in 
three  days  a  return  reported  three  insane  patients  in  the  North¬ 
ern  hospital  of  the  same  surname,  from  the  same  county.  Dr. 

S.  E.  Smith  who  was  at  the  time  assistant  physician  there,  was 
as  much  interested  in  studying  the  heredity  of  defectives  as  I 
was  and  between  us  in  the  course  of  a  few  months  we  worked  out 
much  of  the  family  history.  It  disclosed  the  most  complete  story 
of  hereditary  insanity  and  feeble-mindedness  I  have  ever  found. 

The  story  began  with  Ethel’s  great-grandfather  who  lived  in 
central  Ohio,  a  man  noted  for  physical  strength  and  violent 
temper,  a  great  Indian  fighter.  He,  like  the  patriarch  Job,  had 
seven  sons  and  three  daughters.  We  found  no  history  of  the 
girls.  Of  the  sons  three  were  or  had  been  in  an  Ohio  hospital  for 
the  insane,  one  of  whom  had  killed  himself;  a  fourth  had  been 
hanged  for  the  murder  of  his  wife  under  horrible  circumstances 
that  showed  it  an  insane  act;  a  fifth,  EtheFs  grandfather,  was  one 


Adventures  in  Book-Keeping 


133 


of  those  now  in  the  Northern  hospital,  the  others  of  the  name  in 
the  hospital  were  his  sons,  Ethel’s  uncles.  Ethel  had  a  brother 
who  was  reported  to  be  “queer”,  and  when  her  father  visited  her 
a  few  months  later  altho  he  was  reputed  normal  it  was  easy  to 
'see  where  Ethel’s  defectiveness  came  from. 

After  the  record  was  as  complete  as  we  had  time  and  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  make  it,  had  I  been  asked  for  an  opinion  as  to  Ethel’s 
future  I  should  have  said  that  she  should  be  the  last  to  leave  the 
safe  shelter  of  the  institution.  Without  the  central  registration 
it  is  possible  the  facts,  which  might  have  been  so  important  in 
determining  our  policy,  would  never  have  been  disclosed. 

The  S - case  was  about  the  most  spectacular  which  the  cen¬ 

tral  register  disclosed,  but  there  were  many  showing  similar 
conditions.  We  soon  began  to  see  how  bad  heredity  spreads  out 
over  county  lines  and  how  many  of  the  dependants,  defectives  and 
delinquents  of  the  state  belonged  to  a  comparatively  few  neuro¬ 
pathic  families,  i.  e.  those  carrying  a  distinct,  hereditary,  neu¬ 
rotic  taint  which  shows  itself  in  similar  or  varying  manifesta¬ 
tions  of  defectiveness,  dependency  or  crime,  in  generation  after 
generation,  as  they  succeed  each  other.  It  was  upon  the  evidence 
which  the  central  register  disclosed,  that  my  successors  as  secre¬ 
tary,  Ernest  Bicknell  and  Amos  Butler,  founded  their  remarkable 
studies  of  hereditary  feeble  mindedness.* 

The  mere  fact  of  being  required  to  report  to  the  state  board 
improved  the  registration  of  the  county  asylums  and  homes. 
Since  this  began  it  is  usual  to  find  a  record  book  kept  accu¬ 
rately  up  to  date,  while  formerly  such  records  were  rare.  It  is 
extremely  gratifying  to  me,  having  designed  the  statistical 
methods  of  the  board,  to  see  my  plans  merely  extended  and  ampli¬ 
fied  still  in  use  after  thirty-two  years  of  experience  with  them. 

Finances  and  Contracts. 

The  board’s  work  included  more  than  supervision  of  the  insti¬ 
tutions  with  regard  to  their  inmates;  it  gave  much  attention  to 
their  financial  concerns.  The  method  of  the  purchase  of  sup¬ 
plies,  which  had  been  adopted  by  the  three  institutions  in  Indian- 

*See  the  National  Conference  proceedings  for  1896,  p.  319,  “Feeble- 
Mindedness  as  an  Inheritance”  by  Ernest  Bicknell;  and  in  the  volume  for 
1907,  p.  611,  Appendix  to  the  President’s  address. 


134 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


apolis,  and  which  later,  on  the  suggestion  of  our  board,  was  made 
legal  for  all  the  others,  was  by  monthly  competitive  bids.  Spe¬ 
cifications  were  filed  in  some  public  office,  the  dealers  submitted 
their  bids  upon  which  the  contracts  were  awarded  usually  to  the 
lowest  bidder.  As  the  plan  was  perfected,  contracts  were 
awarded  not  in  gross  but  by  items,  so  as  to  avoid  a  very  simple 
practice  of  bidding  low  on  some  items,  of  which  small  quantities 
would  be  required,  and  high  on  others.  The  quantities  being  not 
exactly  defined  but  always  reading  “more  or  less”,  a  little  collu¬ 
sion  between  the  stewards  and  the  merchants  made  fraud  quite 
easy.  In  former  days  there  had  been  much  corrupt  practice ;  not 
only  gross  favoritism  but  actual  conspiracy  to  defraud  the  state 
had  been  disclosed  by  the  great  investigation  of  the  Central  hos¬ 
pital,  in  1887. 

As  a  rule  in  such  cases  the  evil  practices  emanated  from  the 
business  men’s  side.  In  the  course  of  many  years  of  public  work 
I  have  seen  evidence  of  fraud  and  corruption  and  have  taken  part 
in  exposing  and  frustrating  some  of  it.  My  deliberate  conviction 
is  that  the  average  state  official  is  more  honest  than  the  average 
business  man  who  has  dealings  with  the  state. 

Here  is  an  interesting  case  which  illustrated  what  may  and 
what  does  happen.  One  day  a  reporter  for  the  Journal  taunted 
me  with  not  knowing  of  crooked  financial  practices  at  the  Cen¬ 
tral  hospital.  He  refused  particulars  but  by  some  questioning  I 
wormed  out  of  him  that  the  alleged  crookedness  was  connected 
with  the  purchase  of  engineers  and  plumbers  supplies.  I  was 
very  confident  of  the  honesty  of  the  steward  and  the  superin¬ 
tendent,  but  acting  on  my  invariable  rule  of  disregarding  no 
criticisms,  no  matter  how  apparently  futile,  using  them  never  as 
evidence  but  always  as  pointers,  I  went  out  to  the  hospital  and 
asked  the  steward  for  the  bids  on  plumber’s  supplies  for  the  cur¬ 
rent  year.  All  bids,  accepted  and  rejected,  are  kept  on  file  and 
may  be  inspected  by  anyone  on  request. 

Now  the  usual  method  of  purchase  of  plumbing  supplies  is 
somewhat  intricate.  There  is  a  common  price  list  which  every¬ 
body  uses,  but  the  prices  quoted  are  subject  to  discounts,  one  or 
more,  sometimes  as  much  as  40%,  plus  10%,  plus  5%,  off  the  list. 
The  bids  for  the  hospital  however  were  not  made  by  the  list  but 
straight  prices.  The  steward  was  an  honest  country  store-keeper 


Adventures  in  Book-Keeping 


135 


not  well  versed  in  price-lists,  but  he  had  one  of  plumber’s  sup¬ 
plies  in  his  possession  and  I  found  that  the  prices  quoted  were 
only  a  trifle  below  the  list  and  probably  much  higher  than  the 
goods  would  have  cost  in  the  open  market. 

A  scrutiny  of  the  bids  showed  a  remarkable  system.  Each 
month  there  had  been  the  same  three  bidders,  let  us  call  them 
Firm  A,  Firm  B,  and  Firm  C.  In  January,  Firm  A  got  the  con¬ 
tract,  February,  Firm  B,  March,  Firm  A,  April,  Firm  C,  and  so 
on  through  the  year ;  Firm  A  getting  each  alternate  contract  and 
the  others  in  regular  turn  between.  Firm  A  was  a  large  and 
wealthy  one,  the  other  two  were  smaller.  The  winning  bid  each 
month  Was  almost  exactly  five  per-cent  below  the  next  higher. 
The  evidence  of  a  conspiracy  among  the  bidders  was  unmistak¬ 
able.  Of  course  measures  were  taken  to  break  up  the  fraudulent 
scheme,  although  there  was  not  sufficient  evidence  to  justify  a 
criminal  prosecution. 

Some  time  afterwards  I  met  the  junior  partner  of  Firm  A,  at 
Marion,  Indiana.  The  commissioners  of  Grant  county  were  about 
buying  a  large  quantity  of  iron  pipe,  to  supply  the  court  house, 
jail,  and  some  of  the  city  buildings  with  gas  from  a  well  on  the 
county  farm.  Bids  were  to  be  opened  the  next  day.  There  had 
been  four  supply  firms  represented.  Three  were  in  cahoots  to 
milk  the  county;  one  was  independent.  Mr.  A,  who  had  been 
drinking  and  gave  himself  away' to  me,  (I  had  not  disclosed  my 
identity)  told  me,  with  some  unction,  that  the  independent  fourth 
man  had  been  approached  with  the  question  “if  you  get  the  con¬ 
tract,  how  much  do  you  expect  to  make?”  He  answered  “about 
1500.00”.  The  gentleman  then  said  “if  we  give  you  $500  cash 
now,  will  you  go  home  tonight  without  putting  in  your  bid?”; 
and  he  had  taken  the  money  and  gone.  The  three  firms  on  the 
ground  were  then  preparing  their  bids  and  would  thereafter 
divide  the  spoils.  Having  known  what  Firm  A  had  done  to  the 
state,  it  was  easy  to  understand  what  he  and  his  fellow  rascals 
would  do  to  the  county. 

On  one  of  my  visits  to  an  institution  in  another  state  I  saw 
a  so-called  “sand-oven”  which  had  been  installed  as  a  temporary 
expedient,  and  which  had  worked  so  well  that  there  was  no  hurry 
about  replacing  it  by  a  more  permanent  and  expensive  structure. 
Shortly  afterwards  visiting  the  Wayne  county  poor  asylum,  I 


136 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


found  the  superintendent  wrestling  with  a  badly  worn  out  brick 
oven  and  gave  him  the  name  of  the  manufacturer  of  the  sand- 
ovens.  The  county  bought  one  of  them,  and  in  the  correspond¬ 
ence  mentioned  my  name. 

A  little  later  I  got  a  letter  from  the  manufacturer,  thanking 
me  for  the  recommendation  and  offering  me  a  commission  of  fif¬ 
teen  per  cent  on  all  ovens  sold  in  Indiana  on  my  suggestion.  I 
replied  that  I  was  traveling  for  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  and 
not  carrying  any  side  lines. 

A  few  months  afterwards  the  oven  at  the  school  for  the  blind 
broke  down,  and  there  was  no  possibility  of  an  appropriation 
for  a  new  one  for  many  months  to  come.  I  told  the  steward  of 
these  cheap  sand-ovens  and  advised  him  to  ask  the  maker  for  a 
bid,  warning  him  not  to  mention  my  name.  When  the  bid  came, 
made  as  low  as  possible,  so  the  maker  said,  to  introduce  the 
article  to  the  institutions  of  the  state,  I  advised  the  steward  to 
write  that  they  would  accept  the  bid  if  the  dealer  would  give 
them,  as  a  further  discount,  the  15%  he  had  offered  me.  This 
was  done  although  the  manufacturer  declared  he  made  no  profit 
on  the  deal.  When  the  oven  was  installed  and  working  well  I 
felt  that  I  had  got  even  with  the  man  who  had  “thought  I  was 
altogether  such  a  one  as  himself”. 

A  very  few  other  opportunities  of  petty'  graft  came  along.  I 
had  persuaded  a  board  of  county  commissioners  to  build  a  new 
jail  and  had  agreed  to  accompany  them  on  a  tour  of  several 
counties  in  which  model  jails  had  been  erected.  The  matter 
leaked  out  and  an  architect  called  on  me  and  said  if  I  would 
steer  the  commissioners  to  see  a  jail  he  had  built,  and  he  got  the 
contract,  it  would  be  worth  $ 100. 00  to  me.  I  answered,  “Mr.  B, 
I  might  do  it  for  you,  but  to  tell  you  the  truth,  my  salary  is  large, 
and  I  have  already  more  money  than  I  know  what  to  do  with”.  If 
there  had  been  a  chance  before  for  that  architect,  there  certainly 
was  none  after  that  attempt  at  a  cheap  bribe,  so  far  as  my  influ¬ 
ence  went.  An  architect  who  will  buy  a  contract  will  sell  his 
clients  to  the  building  contractors,  if  they  will  buy  and  they 
often  will. 

Happily  for  my  self-respect,  whether  the  people  I  met  were 
more  honest  than  the  majority,  or  whether  my  character  did  not 
invite  them,  offers  of  the  kind  were  rare. 


Chapter  Eight 


THE  ASYLUMS  FOR  THE  POOR 

With  two  hundred  and  thirty-eight  state  and  county  institu¬ 
tions  and  many  private  ones  under  the  board’s  supervision,  it  was 
evident  that  if  the  law  which  prescribed  investigation  of  them 
all  was  to  be  obeyed,  the  secretary  had  some  work  cut  out  for  him. 

Dr.  Hoyt  in  his  letter  of  advice  had  said  we  could  be  of  most 
service  to  the  counties  and  as  soon  as  I  began  county  visiting  I 
found  there  was  a  plentiful  opportunity  of  serving  them.  Years 
later  my  successors  had  assistants  who  did  most  of  the  inspect¬ 
ing,  but  I  did  it  myself.  I  believe  it  would  be  well  if  all  men 
charged  with  the  same  duty,  could  undertake  at  least  a  part  of 
the  work  of  inspection  of  the  county  institutions  as  well  as  those 
of  the  state.  Any  secretary  of  a  Board  of  State  Charities,  who 
feels  that  his  dignity  would  be  impaired  by  inspecting  jails  and 
almshouses,  has  missed  his  calling.  There  is  no  knowledge  equal 
to  that  gained  at  first  hand.  No  part  of  my  education  in  social 
work  was  more  valuable  than  that  I  gained  in  poorhouses,  jails, 
and  orphans’  homes. 

Among  the  county  institutions  the  most  important  one  is  that 
in  which  the  paupers  are  housed.  I  often  thought  of  it  as  the 
social  cemetery.  When  a  man  dies  physically  we  put  him  in  a 
grave  yard,  where  he  dies  socially  he  goes  to  the  poorhouse. 

In  our  newer  nomenclature  we  are  continually  trying  to  find 
milder  names  for  disagreeable  things,  by  which  we  may  seem 
to  soften  the  harsh  facts  of  existence;  sometimes  a  new  term 
leaves  the  thing  it  stands  for  unchanged,  but  it  usually  indicates 
something  more  than  a  desire  for  euphuism.  The  name  differs 
in  different  states  and  counties.  In  Indiana  the  legal  title  is 
“County  Asylum  for  the  Poor”,  although  it  is  more  often  called 
the  “Poor  Farm”.  In  Great  Britain  it  is  the  “Union  Work- 
house”  (in  my  native  Lancashire,  where  the  poor  fear  and  hate 
the  place,  they  call  it  “the  Bastille”).  “Almshouse”  is  used  in 


(137) 


138 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


New  England ;  in  the  Middle  West  “Poorhouse”  is  the  most  com¬ 
mon;  in  Ohio  the  legal  name  is  “County  Infirmary”.  When 
Homer  Folks  was  Commissioner  of  Charities  in  New  York  he 
changed  “Poorhouse”  to  “Home  for  Aged  and  Infirm”.  In  Cali¬ 
fornia  the  “County  Hospital”  is  the  generic  name,  and  the  home 
for  old  dependents  is  a  department  of  it.  In  Maryland  it  is  the 
“County  Home”;  in  Richmond,  Va.  “Almshouse”  has  recently 
become  “City  Home”.  I  have  heard  from  Utah  of  a  “Home  for 
those  Financially  Unfortunate”.  On  Nantuckett  Island  there  is 
a  beautiful  ivy  clad  house  for  the  poor,  over  whose  portal  is 
carved  the  name  “Our  Island  Home”.  It  has  generally  been  with 
a  sincere  desire  to  make  the  almshouse  into  a  real  home  for 
worthy  poor  people  that  an  attractive  name  has  been  found  for 
it.  With  a  less  offensive  term  has  usually  come  a  milder  and 
kinder  management. 

A  few  years  ago  almost  everywhere,  inmates  of  almshouses 
were,  and  in  many  places  they  still  are,  a  heterogenous  mass, 
representing  almost  every  kind  of  human  distress.  Old  veterans 
of  labor  exhausted  by  many  years  of  ill-requited  toil,  alongside 
of  worn  out  veterans  of  dissipation  the  victims  of  their  own 
vices;  the  crippled  and  the  sick;  the  insane;  the  blind;  deaf- 
mutes;  feeble-minded  and  epileptic;  people  with  all  kinds  of 
chronic  diseases;  unmarried  mothers  with  their  babies;  short 
term  prisoners;  thieves  no  longer  physically  capable  of  crime; 
worn  out  prostitutes ;  and  along  with  all  these  little  orphaned  or 
deserted  children  and  a  few  people  of  better  birth  and  breeding, 
reduced  to  poverty  in  old  age  by  some  disaster  often  through  no 
fault  of  their  own. 

One  of  our  important  duties  was  to  help  correct  such  evil 
conditions;  to  bring  state  and  county  into  co-operation;  to  see 
that  the  different  state  institutions  were  used  so  far  as  available, 
especially  those  for  the  insane,  defectives,  and  children.  Our 
inspections  supplied  the  basic  facts  which  the  lawmakers  needed 
for  guidance.  We  not  only  had  to  study  and  inspect  what  was 
being  done,  but  to  influence  public  opinion,  and  then  the  Legis¬ 
lature,  to  do  better.  In  this  the  Board  of  State  Charities  of 
Indiana  has  been  markedly  successful. 

My  favorite  method  of  inspecting  the  county  institutions  was 
to  drive  round  from  county  to  county,  calling  at  the  court  houses 


The  Asylums  for  the  Poor 


139 


to  interview  the  auditors;  and  the  commissioners*  if  they  hap¬ 
pened  to  be  in  session  ;  inspecting  the  jails  and  the  orphan’s 
homes;  then  going  out  to  the  asylums  to  spend  the  night  with 
them.  The  county  seats  were  about  twenty-five  miles  apart,  just 
an  easy  day’s  drive  with  a  horse  and  buggy  (this  was  long  before 
the  day  of  the  auto).  Sometimes  the  asylum  of  one  county  is 
five  miles  west  of  one  county  seat  and  that  of  its  neighbor  a  few 
miles  east  of  the  next,  so  that  much  travel  was  saved  by  this 
method.  Occasionally  the  asylum  was  a  place  where  one  could 
hardly  stay  overnight  and  I  would  have  to  use  a  hotel,  and  some¬ 
times  that  was  very  little  better  than  the  asylum  itself. 

I  would  drive  up  to  an  asylum  about  four  o’clock  in  the  after¬ 
noon,  put  up  my  horse  in  the  barn  and  visit  the  fields  and  gardens 
before  supper;  I  would  observe  the  inmates’  evening  meal  and 
after  taking  supper  with  the  superintendent,  see  how  they  went 
to  bed,  how  the  sexes  were  separated,  etc.  Then  the  evening  was 
spent,  by  the  stove  in  winter,  on  the  porch  in  summer,  chatting 
with  the  man  in  charge,  telling  him  the  news  of  the  state  and 
the  world,  talking  of  other  asylums  I  had  visited  and  so  on.  To 
the  farmer  in  his  isolation  such  a  visit  is  a  Godsend  and  he  would 
unloose  and  tell  me  all  his  troubles.  Then  to  bed  in  the  guest- 
chamber  and  next  morning  I  was  always  the  first  up ;  saw  how 
the  paupers  washed  and  dressed;  how  the  breakfast  was  cooked 
and  served ;  how  the  work  of  the  house  and  the  farm  started  off 
in  the  morning;  and  when  I  drove  away  about  ten  o’clock,  I  knew 
how  that  asylum  was  managed. 

Often  there  would  be  something  to  correct  and  I  would  tell 
the  superintendent  not  what  he  ought  to  do,  but  what  some  other 
man  had  done  under  similar  circumstances.  Occasionally  I  had 
to  invent  the  other  place  and  man,  in  which  case  I  located  the 
imaginary  instance  in  a  distant  part  of  the  state.  This  was 
teaching  by  parable  for  which  we  have  the  highest  example. 
Then  on  my  next  visit,  the  superintendent  would  say  “you  know 
what  you  told  me  about  so  and  so.  Well,  I  tried  it  and  it  worked 
first  rate ;”  and  the  next  time  the  incident  was  used  in  illustration 
it  would  be  history  not  parable. 

In  the  course  of  my  first  round  of  visits,  I  found  four  asylums 

♦Each  county  has  three  commissioners  who  manage  its  affairs.  In  large 
counties,  they  meet  weekly,  in  small  ones,  once  a  month. 


140 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


which  were  about  as  bad,  in  all  but  one  respect,  as  the  one  so 
graphically  described  in  Egglestones  “Hoosier  School  Master”. 
The  exception  was  that  I  never  found  evidence  of  what  I  believed 
to  be  intentional,  purposive  cruelty.  I  found  much  cruelty 
indeed,  but  it  was  always  the  result  of  ignorance  or  cowardice — 
the  two  chief  causes  of  the  ills  which  afflict  humanity.* 

In  April,  1889,  the  date  of  the  organization  of  our  board, 
twelve  of  the  ninetv-two  asylums  were  still  run  on  the  contract 
plan — which  at  one  time  was  general  in  the  Middle  West — i.  e. 
the  superintendent  was  given  the  use  of  the  farm  and  paid  a  per 
diem  for  each  inmate.  This  was  a  bad  method  and  was  success¬ 
fully  advised  against ;  at  the  end  of  four  years  it  was  abandoned 
in  all  but  one  county,  and  that  one  made  the  change  the  next 
year.  I  was  careful  to  visit  all  the  small  counties  and  out  of  the 
way  places.  My  travels  would  be  noted  in  the  newspapers  and 
the  officials  would  often  sav  “we  saw  vou  were  in  the  next  countv 
and  we  were  afraid  you  were  going  to  skip  us,  because  we  don’t 
amount  to  much”.  Such  people  needed  me  more  and  were  more 
responsive,  than  those  in  the  populous  and  wealthy  counties. 

In  all  these  inspections  and  corrections  the  method  of 
inwardness,  which  worked  so  well  with  the  state  institutions, 
was  used.  Whenever  possible  reforms  were  secured  from  within ; 
altho  it  frequently  happened  that  a  superintendent  would  beg 
me  to  call  on  the  commissioners  and  tell  them  what  ought  to  be 
done.  We  had  no  authority  to  order  changes,  so  that  we  had 
to  depend  on  the  powers  of  persuasion  and  publicity,  and  only 
when  the  former  failed  did  we  use  the  latter.  In  a  few  cases, 
things  were  found  so  bad  that  stern  measures  were  necessary, 
even  some  drastic  newspaper  write-ups.  Usually  advice  to  the 
officials,  perhaps  carried  to  the  county  commissioners,  sufficed. 

The  fact  that  the  institutions  were  visited  frequently  and  that 
a  public  report  was  made  about  them  and  printed  every  year, 
had  a  remarkable  effect  in  amending  conditions  caused  by  neglect. 
I  was  often  able  to  say  that,  as  my  report  was  not  due  to  be  pub¬ 
lished  for  a  few  months  to  come,  if  they  would  promise  to  make 
some  changes  I  advised,  I  would  defer  my  judgment  until  they 

♦What  I  learned  about  asylum  administration  in  my  visits  was  after¬ 
wards  embodied  in  my  book  “The  Almshouse”  published  by  the  Russel 
Sage  Foundation. 


The  Asylums  for  the  Poor 


141 


had  had  a  chance  to  keep  their  word.  This  was  more  efficacious 
after  our  first  annual  report,  and  they  recognized  the  frank  state¬ 
ments  it  contained ;  all  of  which  were  re-printed  by  their  local 
newspapers. 

When  I  visited  Carroll  County  in  the  summer  of  1889,  I  found 
an  intelligent  and  apparently  painstaking  superintendent  in 
charge  of  a  deplorable  institution,  with  inadequate,  over-crowded 
buildings,  a  run-down  exhausted  farm,  and  a  population  with 
more  than  the  average  number  of  insane,  defectives  and  children 
among  them.  The  man  in  charge  asked  me  to  tell  the  commission¬ 
ers  about  it.  I  called  on  the  county  auditor  who  told  me  that  the 
condition  I  described  was  well  understood,  but  that  the  commis- 
siners  were  afraid  of  being  charged  with  wasting  county  funds 
if  they  made  any  costly  improvements.  It  is  difficult  to  over¬ 
estimate  the  power  of  the  public  opinion  of  the  tax-payers  over 
the  officials  of  a  rural  county. 

The  commissioners  were  in  session  and  I  told  them  my  story. 
They  pleaded  the  taxpayers’  objection  to  expense  for  the  poor. 
I  told  them  that  the  conditions  were  a  sad  disgrace  to  a  wealthy 
county  and  that  I  was  sorely  tempted  to  make  them  public,  so 
that  Carroll  county  should  see  itself  in  the  eyes  of  the  rest  of  the 
state.  They  grasped  at  the  idea  and  said  they  wished  I  would 
do  that  very  thing;  that  it  would  help  them  to  do  what  they 
knew  ought  to  be  done. 

Accordingly,  when  I  returned  to  Indianapolis,  I  wrote  a 
graphic  story  of  the  asylum  and  gave  it  to  the  News.  The  next 
day,  Mr.  McCulloch,  who  was  even  more  positive  in  the  method 
of  inwardness  than  I,  came  to  the  office,  more  excited  than  I  had 
ever  seen  him.  He  accused  me  of  going  back  on  all  we  had 
agreed  upon  about  avoiding  sensationalism.  Only  when  he  was 
told  that  I  had  acted  at  the  request  of  the  commissioners  and 
to  strengthen  their  hands,  did  he  moderate  his  condemnation, 
and  even  then  he  was  doubtful  about  it. 

As  a  result  of  several  visits  to  each  county,  many  things  were 
corrected  and  the  general  average  of  the  institution  management 
was  greatly  raised.  I  learned  to  understand  the  difficulties  under 
which  people  labored,  and  so  could  give  advice  intelligently. 
Most  of  the  county  officials  wanted  to  do  the  right  thing  and  were 


142 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


glad  of  advice  and  information ;  some  of  them  were  pathetically 
eager  for  instruction. 

On  one  occasion,  when  I  had  called  on  a  board  of  commis¬ 
sioners  to  urge  some  reforms  of  their  poor  asylum,  the  chairman 
of  the  board ‘said,  “now,  young  man,  just  tell  us  what  we  have  to 
do  and  we  will  do  it.”  T  answered  that  it  was  not  my  business 
to  give  orders;  I  could  only  tell  them  how  things  seemed  to  me 
and  offer  suggestions.  He  answered  “never  mind  what  you  call 
it,  just  tell  us  anyway”. 

One  frequent  subject  for  advice  to  asylum  superintendents 
was  in  the  matter  of  the  personal  cleanliness  of  the  inmates. 
The  rural  people  of  Indiana,  like  those  of  many  states,  are  some¬ 
times  pretty  lax  in  these  matters,  and  I  found  many  almshouses 
where  a  bathtub  had  never  been  seen,  and  several  in  which  they 
had  been  installed  by  a  reforming  board  of  county  commission¬ 
ers,  but  were  never  used.  An  interesting  case  of  the  kind  was  in 

H - county,  in  an  asylum  which  had  been  fitted  up  elaborately 

with  modern  comforts,  and  then  had  been  so  badly  managed  that 
it  was  all  out  of  repair.  On  my  first  visit  I  had  wakened  up  the 
commissioners  and  the  townspeople  of  the  county  seat  through 
their  local  newspaper,  and  after  an  investigation  by  a  committee 
of  citizens  to  find  out  how  much  I  had  exaggerated  the  facts,  the 
commissioners  had  removed  the  old  manager,  a  lazy,  drunken 
politician  of  the  baser  sort,  and  had  installed  an  energetic,  intel¬ 
ligent  tnan  in  his  place. 

On  my  second  visit,  I  found  the  new  superintendent,  who  had 
already  made  many  improvements  and  was  eager  for  good  advice. 
He  asked  me  for  authoritative  rules  as  to  bathing,  and  was  told 
that  a  full  bath  for  everv  inmate  once  a  week  was  the  minimum. 

c/ 

A  year  later,  on  my  third  visit,  T  was  met  by  the  superin¬ 
tendent  with  the  following  story  ;  he  said,  “you  remember  what 
you  told  me  about  bathing  these  men;  well,  we  did  it,  but  we 
killed  one  man.  He  was  a  great,  fat  tramp,  looked  as  big  as  you 
are.  (I  then  weighed  about  240  lbs.)  I  told  him  he  must  take  a 
bath  and  he  replied  that  he  would  not  do  it;  that  he  had  never 
had  a  bath  since  he  went  in  swimming  in  the  creek  when  he  was 
a  boy.  I  told  him  that  the  state  inspector  said  I  must  make  the 
men  bathe,  and  I  was  going  to  do  it.  So  the  hired  men  and  I 
stripped  him.  He  had  on  two  pairs  of  pants  and  a  pair  of  over- 


The  Asylums  for  the  Poor 


143 


alls,  three  shirts,  two  vests  and  a  wamuss  (a  sleeved  vest)  and 
between  them  all  he  had  old  newspapers  and  chaff  that  filled  a 
bushel  basket.  When  we  got  him  stripped  he  was  not  as  big  as 
I  am.  (The  superintendent  weighed  about  125  lbs.)  His  clothes 
were  all  alive,  and  we  burnt  them  up  under  the  furnace.  Oh, 
but  he  was  dirty;  but  we  scrubbed  him  well  in  lots  of  hot  water 
and  soap.  Then  I  was  afraid  he  might  take  cold,  and  I  gave  him 
a  suit  of  heavy  flannels  that  I  had  bought  for  a  consumptive 
patient,  who  died  before  he  had  worn  them,  and  the  heaviest  suit 
of  clothes  I  had  in  the  house.  Then  I  gave  him  an  old  overcoat 
of  mine.  But  he  couldn’t  seem  to  get  warm ;  he  just  shivered  and 
shook ;  so  we  put  him  to  bed  and  sent  for  the  doctor  who  said  he 
had  pneumonia,  and  he  died  in  three  days.”  Thereafter,  I  was 
cautious  in  giving  advice  about  bathing,  usually  qualifying  it 
with  the  recommendation  that,  in  extreme  cases,  it  is  always  well 
to  make  improvements  gradually. 

Another  subject  for  good  advice  was  about  the  employment 
of  inmates.  It  was  often  the  case  that  one  or  two  industrious 
ones  among  them  were  worked  almost  too  hard,  while  the  major¬ 
ity  were  loafers.  I  made  notes  of  the  good  workers  I  found  and 
used  them  with  good  effect  upon  the  superintendents  who  had 
not  realized  that  they  ought  to  expect  work  from  paupers,  or 
who  had  not  acquired  the  knack  of  getting  work  out  of  them. 

It  was  interesting  to  notice  that  the  mildly  insane  and  the 
feeble-minded  were  usually  the  best  workers,  but  some  very  old 
people  were  also  quite  useful.  When  an  able-bodied,  normal- 
minded  person  becomes  a  pauper,  in  Indiana  at  any  rate,  it  is 
usually  because  he  is  incorrigibly  lazy,  and  a  superintendent 
would  often  tell  me  “it  takes  more  work  to  get  work  out  of  them 
than  the  work  they  will  do”. 

I  used  to  stress  the  fact  that  the  advantage  of  steady  work  to 
the  management,  and  still  more  to  the  paupers  themselves,  is 
greatly  more  than  that  of  its  possible  economic  value.  It  pro¬ 
motes  discipline  and  health  and  makes  life  better  worth  living. 
Here  are  a  few  of  my  favorite  cases  which  I  used  with  superin¬ 
tendents  who  needed  encouragement  in  this  part  of  their  duty : 

An  old  woman  of  ninety,  who  cannot  stand  to  wash  dishes, 
sits  and  wipes  them;  this  is  her  task  three  times  daily;  she  does 
it  cheerfully  and  feels  that  she  is  doing  her  share  and  is  much 


144 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


happier  for  it.  A  crippled  man  who  is  unable  to  walk,  or  even 
stand,  whittles  out  butcher’s  skewers,  which  are  sold  for  a  trifle 
for  his  benefit.  A  partly-crippled,  feeble-minded  man  divides  his 
time  between  the  lawn  and  the  green-house;  in  summer  he  very 
slowly  but  regularly,  runs  the  lawn  mower;  in  winter  he  sits  in 
the  green-house  and  watches  the  thermometer,  giving  prompt 
notice  when  it  goes  too  high  or  too  low. 

In  L - county,  one  insane  man  has  charge  of  all  feeding  of 

cattle  and  horses,  carrying  the  keys  of  the  feed-room ;  he  will  not 
speak  to  a  human  being  but  is  chatty  with  the  live  stock  and  is 

an  excellent  horseman.  In  W - county,  an  insane  man  is  the 

best  hand  on  the  farm,  has  his  regular  team,  plows,  harrows  and 
does  all  a  hired  hand  would  do  except  drive  his  wagon  to  town. 

In  O - county,  an  insane  man  does  all  the  housework  except 

the  cooking  for  a  small  almshouse,  and  washes,  starches,  and 
irons  the  clothes ;  he  is  a  very  neat  ironer,  a  little  cross  and  some¬ 
what  profane  in  speech  but  perfectly  kind  in  action.  In  H - 

county,  a  feeble-minded  woman  does  all  the  cooking,  washing, 

and  ironing  for  an  almshouse  of  thirty  inmates.  In  C - 

county,  a  feeble-minded  woman  with  three  illegitimate  chil¬ 
dren  does  the  washing,  (Mondays)  the  baking  (Wednesdays  and 
Saturdays),  and  the  churning  (Tuesdays  and  Fridays);  Thurs¬ 
day  is  the  only  day  she  does  not  seem  happy,  the  regular  religious 
service  on  Sunday  seeming  to  have  as  consoling  an  effect  as  the 
active  work  of  the  other  days.* 

The  Feeble-Minded  in  the  Asylums 

In  almost  every  asylum  I  found  feeble-minded  people.  It  was 
what  I  learned  about  them  when  visiting  these  places  that  made 
me  so  insistent  on  the  need  of  training  and  control  when  I  after¬ 
wards  had  charge  of  the  feeble  minded  at  Fort  Wayne.  Generation 
after  generation  many  of  the  families  to  which  these  defective 
people  belonged  had  been  paupers,  in  or  out  of  the  asylum; 

*What  is  said  above  about  the  insane  in  poor-houses  must  not  be  con¬ 
strued  as  an  argument  in  favor  of  their  continued  care  under  ordinary 
almshouse  conditions.  It  is  meant  to  show  that  it  is  possible,  under  favor¬ 
able  conditions,  to  give  fairly  good  care  to  certain  selected  exceptional 
cases.  The  sad  stories  that  can  be  truthfully  told,  of  the  neglected  insane 
under  unfit  conditions,  make  every  humane  person  agree  that  they  should 
all  be,  if  not  under  complete  state  support,  very  certainly  under  complete 
state  control.  .Support  and  control  are  not  necessarily  functions  of  the 
same  agency.  See  about  insane  in  asylums,  pp.  113  and  114. 


The  Asylums  for  the  Poor 


145 


their  total  number  and  the  proportion  of  feeble  minded  among 
them  steadily  increasing  as  time  went  on.  The  theory  that  the 
county  asylum  does  not  and  can  not  control  these  defectives  was 
abundantly  demonstrated.  It  was  my  knowledge  of  such  facts 
which  made  me  unable  later,  to  agree  with  Governor  Durbin  when 
he  declared  that  the  burden  of  the  feeble  minded  belonged  on  the 
county  government  and  not  on  that  of  the  state. 

The  treatment  of  feeble-minded  women  in  almshouses  forms 
one  of  the  worst  chapters  in  the  history  of  institution  misman¬ 
agement.  There  are  many  almshouses  in  the  land  where  there 

r 

may  be  found  idiotic  or  imbecile  women  with  illegitimate  chil¬ 
dren,  often  both  begotten  and  born  there.  One  Saturday  after¬ 
noon  on  my  return  to  the  state  house  after  a  round  of  county 
visits,  I  found  an  indignation  meeting  in  process  in  my  office. 
The  participants  were  the  women  clerks  and  stenographers 
employed  in  the  building.  The  chairman  was  a  woman  of  great 
ability  and  force  of  character  who  was  chief  clerk  in  the  office 
of  the  supreme  court.  The  occasion  of  the  meeting  was  the  reve¬ 
lations  as  to  the  treatment  of  feeble-minded  girls  and  women  in 
the  county  asylums  of  the  state,  as  disclosed  by  a  series  of  reports 
which  had  been  accumulating  during  the  two  weeks  of  my 
absence. 

My  clerk  was  so  horrified  by  the  stories  of  immorality  and 
illegitimacy  which  the  reports  disclosed  that  she  had  talked 
about  them  to  her  fellow  clerks  in  the  state  house,  and  they  had 
come  together  to  consider  what  should  be  done.  The  chairman 
of  the  meeting  was  a  member  of  the  executive  committee  of  the 
state  Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs.  She  brought  the  subject  up 
in  the  Federation,  and  the  interest  aroused  among  the  best 
women  of  the  state  had  an  important  influence  on  the  legislature 
a  year  or  two  later,  when  the  act  to  take  feeble-minded  females 
of  child-bearing  age  into  the  institution  at  Fort  Wayne  was  pre¬ 
sented  to  it. 

In  order  that  the  almshouse,  or  other  institution,  shall  be  a 
benefit  and  not  a  detriment  to  the  body  politic,  we  must  make 
sure  that  it  shall  not,  either  positively  or  negatively,  encourage 
and  foster  degeneracy;  as  will  be  the  case  if  it  does  nothing  for 
the  degenerate  human  beings  but  to  keep  them  alive  and  allow 
them  to  increase  and  multiply.  Care  for  them  kindly,  the  alms- 


146  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

house  must,  when  they  come  to  it.  But  care  of  defectives  has  a 
necessary  corollary,  and  that  is  control.  At  present,  a  great 
many  of  our  almshouses;  perhaps  the  majority  of  them;  are 
doing  the  first,  they  are  making  their  inmates  fairly  comfortable. 
But  very  few  of  them  are  doing  all  they  should  in  the  way  of 
control;  partly  because  they  do  not  realize  the  need,  partly 
because  they  do  not  know  how  to  exert  the  power,  but  chiefly 
because  our  laws  do  not  plainly  prescribe  the  duty  nor  authorize 
the  method  of  performing  it. 

It  is  a  reasonable  assertion  to  make  that  a  large  proportion 
of  these  degenerate  people  are  actually  by-products  of  philan¬ 
thropy  and  especially  of  the  almshouses.  They  have  been  kept 
alive  and  their  perpetuation  has  been  made  possible,  if  it  has  not 
actually  been  encouraged,  by  public  relief.  It  is  true  that  many 
of  them  would  have  survived  and  would  have  perpetuated  their 
unhappy  kind  without  public  relief ;  private  charity  is  equally  to 
blame,  perhaps  more  in  some  cases.  Nevertheless  the  indictment 
stands.  We  have  these  people  as  a  public  burden  because,  when 
we  feed,  shelter,  and  clothe  them,  as  we  must ;  we  do  not  control 
them,  as  we  ought. 

In  discussing*  the  evils  of  hereditary  feeble  mindedness  and 
public  responsibility  for  averting  them,  Ernest  Bicknell  says, 
“whatever  the  differences  of  opinion  among  investigators  as  to 
first  causes  or  chief  causes,  or  whatever  plans  may  be  proposed 
for  reaching  and  remedying  or  alleviating  the  evil,  I  believe  it  a 
safe  conclusion,  and  worthy  of  acceptance,  that;  while  society  is 
but  remotely  responsible  for  the  first  generation  of  feeble-minded¬ 
ness  in  any  family ;  its  responsibility  for  every  subsequent  gener¬ 
ation  of  feeble-mindedness  in  the  same  direct  line  of  descent,  is 
clear-cut,  and  beyond  question.”* 

Economy  and  Expense 

A  few  of  the  populous  counties  maintained  large  asylums,  but 
many  of  the  ninety-two  were  merely  overgrown  farmhouses  in 
which  the  classification  of  the  inmates  was  difficult.  The  need 
of  extended  accomodations  was  sometimes  met  by  new  buildings 
at  great  expense.  One  instance  of  extension  showed  a  much  better 
plan.  In  Hamilton  county  was  a  good  sized  brick  building,  not 


♦Bicknell  in  “Feeble-Mindedness  as  an  Inheritance”  Supra. 


The  Asylums  for  the  Poor 


147 


in  very  good  order  and  not  very  comfortable.  At  the  rear  of  the 
main  building,  across  a  grass  plot,  was  a  row  of  small  frame 
cottages  of  one  room  each.  In  front  of  them  was  a  long  porch, 
its  pillars  covered  with  climbing  roses  and  morning  glories.  Each 
little  shanty,  for  they  were  nothing  more,  was  occupied  by  two 
old  men  or  two  old  women  or  an  old  married  couple.  Abundant 
natural  gas  found  on  the  farm  made  the  matter  of  heating 
and  lighting  simple.  Each  cottage  had  a  small  cook  stove  which 
served  also  to  heat  the  apartment :  the  walls  were  whitewashed ; 
the  furniture  in  most  of  them  had  been  brought  from  a  former 
home  and  so  each  room  looked  different  from  every  other.  At 
the  end  of  the  row  lived  an  old  physician,  once  quite  well  off  with 
a  practice  at  the  county  seat,  and  his  wife,  reduced  to  poverty  by 
accident  and  other  misfortunes  at  the  ages  of  eighty  and  seventy- 
five.  They  had  their  own  feather  bed,  bureau,  and  chairs,  a  small 
library  of  books,  and  a  few  pictures ;  they  made  their  own  break¬ 
fast  and  supper,  sometimes  going  over  to  the  “brick  house”  for 

dinner.  Thev  were  devoutlv  thankful,  since  thev  had  to  end  their 

*//<*/ 

days  in  the  poorhouse,  that  their  lot  had  fallen  so  as  to  include 
even  a  one-room  cottage  which  they  might  have  to  themselves. 

The  superintendent  of  the  asylum  told  me  that  when  there 
was  a  vacant  place  in  one  of  the  shanties  the  other  inmates  com¬ 
peted  for  the  privilege  of  occupying  it.  To  move  into  it,  how¬ 
ever,  was  a  reward  of  merit,  and  the  best  behaved,  most  cleanly 
inmates  were  chosen  to  receive  the  favor. 

At  that  asylum  I  learned  the  lesson  that  uniformity  of  eco¬ 
nomic  condition,  the  fact  that  all  are  alike  poor  and  dependent, 
does  not  make  them  alike  socially,  nor  justify  absolute  uniform¬ 
ity  of  treatment;  that  the  administration  which  does  not  dis¬ 
tinguish  between  the  victims  of  misfortune  and  the  victims  of 
vice  cannot  be  just  to  either  class.  It  would  be  as  reasonable  to 
say  that  every  sick  patient  in  a  hospital  should  be  fed  or  nursed 
exactly  like  every  other,  as  to  insist  that  all  almshouse  inmates 
should  be  treated  alike.  To  doom  decent,  honest,  cleanly  men 
and  women  to  close  association  with  diseased,  vicious  and  filthy 
persons,  is  as  unjust  as  it  is  cruel.  The  classification  between 
male  and  female,  or  between  adult  and  juvenile;  is  not  more 
necessary  than  that  between  the  worthy  poor,  and  the  depraved 
and  degraded  pauper. 


148 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


The  law  required  all  plans  for  new  buildings  to  be  submitted 
to  the  Board  of  State  Charities  before  contracts  were  let;  but 
only  for  suggestion,  we  had  no  authority  to  do  more  than  advise. 
In  advising  county  commissioners  about  extending  their  accom¬ 
modations,  I  often  used  the  example  of  the  Hamilton  county 
shanties,  as  humane  and  economical.* 

In  all  we  did  among  the  institutions  and  charitable  agencies 
of  both  state  and  counties,  the  matter  of  wise  economy  was  one 
of  the  things  we  had  to  stress.  But  financial  niggardliness,  the 
spending  of  the  least  possible  amount  of  money,  is  sometimes  far 
from  true  economy. 

It  by  no  means  follows  that  the  almshouse  with  the  lowest 
per  capita  cost,  is  the  most  economical  for  the  community.  In 
many  instances  the  alternative  of  almhouse  care  is  outdoor  re¬ 
lief.  *  Now,  of  all  forms  of  public  charity,  outdoor  relief,  except 
under  the  most  careful  supervision,  is  the  most  liable  to  abuse, 
the  most  certain  to  grow  to  an  inordinate  amount.  An  overseer 
of  the  poor  declared  to  me  that  “outdoor  relief  is  as  catching  as 
the  smallpox,  and  almost  as  deadly.” 

People  not  really  in  need  of  its  shelter  will  rarely  seek  ad¬ 
mission  to  the  almhouse.  But  many  will  accept  outdoor  relief 
who  are  not  really  in  need  of  charitable  aid  and  probably  would 
get  on  pretty  well  without  it  if  they  were  offered  the  alternative 
of  admission  to  the  almshouse  or  nothing.f 

When,  therefore,  the  institution  is  known  to  be  so  bare  of 
comfort,  so  severe  in  its  discipline,  or  so  badly  managed,  that 
public  opinion  will  not  sanction  a  decent  old  person’s  being 
forced  into  it,  then  outdoor  relief  inevitably  increases  in  amount 
and  with  its  increase  comes  a  rapid  growth  in  the  amount  of 
general  pauperism. 

A  well-managed,  comfortable  almshouse  is  a  preventive  of 
unnecessary  pauperism.  Those  who  really  need  public  care  can 
have  it  there,  and  those  who  do  not  need  it  will  not  seek  it  there. 

-  J 

ft  ,  *  “  i 

♦See  in  the  “Almshouse”  page  184,  a  description  of  the  little  cottages 
of  the  Fir  Vale  Union,  Sheffield,  England,  as  reported  by  Mrs.  Alice  Lin¬ 
coln,  to  the  National  Conference,  in  the  volume  for  1905. 

tAn  elderly  woman  who  had  been  getting  outdoor  relief  for  many  years 
was  told  that  she  could  henceforth  have  relief  only  in  the  county  asylum. 
She  replied,  “is  it  send  me  to  the  poorhouse  ye  would ;  faith  I’ll  take  in 
washing  first”. 


The  Asylums  for  the  Poor 


149 


An  ill-kept,  disorderly  almshouse,  without  proper  classification 
of  inmates,  without  thorough  discipline  and  order,  without  ef¬ 
ficient  control  over  those  whom  it  feeds  and  clothes,  and  with¬ 
out  any  permanence  in  its  relations  to  the  degenerates  among 
those  for  whom  it  cares;  may  be  not  only  a  cause  of  dire  waste 
of  public  funds  but  will  inevitably  promote  and  increase  pauper¬ 
ism  and  degeneracy  and  all  the  human  ills  that  come  from  them. 


Chapter  Nine 


DEPENDENT  CHILDREN 

No  state  hoard  has  had  better  success  in  improving  the 
methods  of  caring  for  dependent  children  than  has  that  of  In¬ 
diana.  Most  that  has  been  done,  however,  was  by  my  successors, 
especially  by  Amos  Butler,  whose  work  as  a  constructive  reformer 
in  this  department  has  been  unequalled  by  that  of  any  other  man 
of  whom  I  know.  So  I  have  much  less  to  say  of  work  for  depend¬ 
ent  children  than  will  fall  to  him  to  tell  when  he  shall  retire 
from  active  duty  and  write  his  autobiography. 

The  County  Orphans  Home 

The  county  orphans  home  system  had  been  copied  from  that 
of  Ohio  many  years  before  but  in  some  of  the  counties  it  had 
gradually  deteriorated.  The  homes  were  usually  owned  by  the 
counties  but  operated  by  a  matron,  sometimes  working  under  a 
board  of  lady  managers,  sometimes  dealing  directly  with  the 
commissioners.  The  county  paid  for  each  child  at  the  standard 
rate  of  twenty-five  cents  a  day  if  the  deal  was  with  the  matron; 
and  usually  thirty  cents  if  with  a  Board.  In  many  cases,  the 
commissioners  supplemented  this  inadequate  rate  by  furnishing 
a  cow,  and  sometimes  the  lady-board  added  to  the  comforts  of 
the  home  by  private  donations. 

It  was  possible  in  those  early  days  of  the  eighteen-eighties 
and  nineties  to  keep  the  children  alive,  even  if  there  were  but 
few  of  them,  at  that  rate.  As  the  numbers  increased  the  bargain 
improved.  With  thirty  children  the  matron  began  to  get  a  little 
out  of  it  for  herself ;  when  the  number  reached  sixty  it  was  quite 
profitable. 

The  homes  were  presumably  run  on  the  placing-out-plan,  good 
foster  homes  were  to  be  found  for  all  placeable  children.  But  the 
temptation  to  accumulate  them  in  large  numbers  so  as  to  make 


(150) 


Dependent  Children 


151 


the  business  profitable  was  irresistible;  even  to  the  managers 
who  got  no  personal  profit;  still  more  to  the  matrons  who  dealt 
directly  with  the  counties;  and  almost  everywhere  placing  was 
peglected  and  the  numbers  grew  larger  and  larger.  For  the  same 
reason  admission  was  easy;  almost  every  child  presented  was 
accepted.  In  many  counties  there  was  no  official  control  of 
receptions.  Often  there  were  cases  when  both  parents  were  living 
and  able  to  care  for  their  children,  and  many  cases  when  there 
were  other  relatives  who  might  have  cared  for  them  if  the  home 
were  not  complaisant.  All  kinds  of  reasons  were  offered  by  the 
matrons  when  they  were  asked  why  the  children  were  not  placed. 
They  had  not  been  able  to  find  homes  that  were  fit;  they  were 
afraid  the  children  would  be  unkindly  treated ;  they  had  parents 
who  would  soon  reclaim  them  and  similar-  excuses.  Meanwhile 
children  were  being  brought  into  the  state  from  New  York,  Massa¬ 
chusetts,  and  Ohio,  in  large  numbers,  and  placed  in  foster  homes 
with  little  difficulty. 

In  spite  of  these  drawbacks,  many  of  the  forty-two  homes 
which  I  visited  in  1889  to  1893,  were  well  kept,  and  the  children 
as  well  cared  for  as  is  possible  in  institution  life,  which  at  its 
best  is  an  unnatural  existence  for  a  child.  But  there  were  some 
instances  of  great  abuse.  In  one  county,  a  matron  dealing 
directly  with  the  commissioners,  had  accumulated  sixty-five  chil¬ 
dren.  They  were  poorly  fed  and  clothed  and  the  matron  was 
making  a  big  profit.  The  cost  of  the  home  was  more  to  the 
county  than  that  of  the  asylum,  the  outdoor  relief,  and  the  med¬ 
ical  relief  all  combined.  The  agent  of  a  Children’s  Home  Society 
approached  the  commissioners,  and  offered  to  place  all  the  chil¬ 
dren,  guaranteeing  good  homes  and  adequate  after  care.  The 
commissioners  made  a  bargain  with  him,  agreeing  to  pay  the 
society  a  uniform  sum  of  $50.00  for  the  expense  of  placing  and 
supervising  each  child.* 

The  agent  agreed  to  be  ready  to  take  them  in  three  weeks  and 
the  story  of  the  bargain  appeared  in  the  county  paper.  At  the 
time  appointed,  when  the  agent  had  presumably  sixty-five  homes 
waiting  and  came  for  the  children,  there  were  only  three  left. 
Sixty-two  had  been  reclaimed  by  parents  or  other  relatives  who, 

♦Perhaps  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  this  bargain  was  not 
approved  by  the  Board  of  State  Charities. 


152 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


while  quite  willing  to  let  the  public  feed  and  clothe  the  children 
in  the  county,  would  not  let  them  go  they  knew  not  where. 

The  effects  of  the  investigations  and  inspections  were  cumula¬ 
tive  and  finally  resulted  in  a  radical  change  of  system,  which 
however  occurred  after  my  time  as  secretary  and  does  not  belong 
in  this  story,  since  it  was  not  so  positively  the  conclusion  of 
anything  I  began  as  was  the  reform  of  outdoor  relief  which  is 
told  in  another  chapter. 

Some  incidents  connected  with  the  inspection  of  orphans 
homes  were  pathetic,  some  rather  humorous.  Of  the  latter  kind 
was  a  visit  to  a  county  a  few  miles  south  of  the  Capital.  The 
home  was  four  miles  from  the  county  seat  and  I  drove  out,  arriv¬ 
ing  about  four  o’clock  in  the  afternoon.  Finding  the  matron 
absent  and  it  being  my  first  visit,  I  waited  her  return,  before 
beginning  my  inspection.  She  came  about  five,  and  told  me  that 
as  she  had  been  obliged  to  go  to  town  the  children’s  supper  would 
be  a  little  delayed,  in  the  meantime  would  I  visit  the  dormitories 
etc.  This  took  a  little  more  than  an  hour,  the  matron  rather 
prolonging  the  inspection.  The  house  was  clean,  the  dormitories 
a  little  over-crowded,  but  she  explained  that  she  had  six  children 
to  send  out  to  excellent  homes  next  week.  Then  about  6:30,  I 
was  shown  into  the  dining-room  where  there  were  thirty-two 
children,  all  very  clean,  the  aprons  suspiciously  so,  a  clean  table 
cloth  on  the  table  and  a  very  nice  supper;  boiled  rice,  apple 
sauce,  bread  and  butter,  syrup,  and  plenty  of  milk;  for  the  big¬ 
gest  boys  who  worked  on  the  little  farm,  some  cold  meat  and 
hashed  potatoes.  On  the  whole  the  inspection  was  favorable  and 
the  matron  got  a  good  report. 

At  the  next  yearly  visit  a  new  matron  was  found  who 
remarked:  “Mr.  Johnson  the  children  all  remember  your  visit 
last  year.”  When  I  asked  why,  she  pointed  to  a  girl  of  fourteen, 
saying,  “there’s  one  of  them,  ask  her”.  When  asked  if  she  remem¬ 
bered,  and  why,  she  said,  “oh  yes,  because  of  the  good  supper  we 
had ;”  and  I  discovered  to  my  mortification  that  I  had  been  beauti¬ 
fully  fooled  with  a  fake  supper,  the  real  one,  a  much  more  frugal 
meal,  had  been  on  the  table  when  the  matron  arrived  at  five. 
While  I  was  inspecting  upstairs,  the  children  were  all  washed, 
combed  and  put  in  clean  blouses  and  aprons,  and  an  extra  good 
supper  arranged  for  my  benefit.  It  was  a  useful  lesson  in  methods 


Dependent  Children 


153 


of  inspection  and  I  did  not  get  fooled  again  in  quite  the  same 
manner ;  altho  the  inspector  who  is  never  deceived,  is  rare  indeed. 

Migrant  Children 

While  the  county  orphans’  homes  were  professing  difficulty  in 
placing  out  their  children,  other  agencies  were  having  more 
success. 

On  a  visit  to  the  home  in  Montgomery  county  I  found  three 
children  who  had  been  brought  to  Indiana  by  an  Eastern  society ; 
placed  in  a  poverty-stricken  home,  and  had  gravitated  by  way 
of  the  poorhouse  to  the  orphans  home.  No  one  could  tell  the 
name  of  the  society;  but  the  children  were  sure  they  came  from 
Boston.  I  wrote  my  friend,  Charles  S.  Birtwell,  then  secretary 
of  the  Mass.  Children’s  Home  Society,  who  was  a  martinet  in 
standards  of  child-helping ;  asking  which,  if  any,  of  the  numerous 
child-helping  agencies  of  Boston,  could  be  guilty  of  such  reckless 
work.  To  place  children  so  carelessly  and  with  such  poor  after¬ 
supervision  that  they  became  paupers,  is  a  grave  indictment. 
Birtwell  replied  that  he  only  knew  of  one  whose  standards  were 
so  low,  and  that  was  the  Blank  Home  for  Blanks.* 

A  few  weeks  later,  being  in  Jay  County  on  a  Saturday  morn¬ 
ing,  interviewing  the  auditor,  that  officer  told  me  that  an  agent 
from  an  Eastern  society  with  a  group  of  children,  was  at  the 
railway  depot  waiting  for  a  train.  I  hurried  to  the  station  and 
found  the  Rev.  Mr.  Blank  with  thirty  children,  waiting  to  go  to 
Huntington.  I  found  that  he  was  from  the  Blank  Home  for 
Blanks.  The  children  were  nicely  dressed,  velvet  blouses,  lace 
collars,  pretty  hats  and  made  an  excellent  appearance.  On  being 
asked  how  many  foster  homes  he  had  ready  for  these  children, 
he  replied,  “not  one,  but  I  will  have  every  one  placed  in  an 
excellent  Christian  home  by  Monday  night”.  Then  he  explained 
his  method ;  he  was  to  preach  in  the  Methodist  church  on  Sunday 
morning,  have  the  children  on  exhibition  and  take  them  to 
Sunday-school;  then  repeat  the  performance  with  them  at  the 
Presbyterian  church  Sunday  night.  Then  from  the  hotel  on 
Monday  morning,  he  would  place  the  children  with  the  good 

♦The  society  has  raised  its  standards  and  is  now  doing  excellent  work 
so  that  I  do  not  think  it  fair  to  give  its  real  name. 


154 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


people  who  would  come  for  them.  On  being  accused  of  reckless 
work  he  retorted  that  I  evidently  had  no  faith  in  that  Divine 
Providence  which  watches  over  the  orphan.  He  said  he  formed 
a  committee  of  good  Christian  people  in  each  county,  who  agreed 
to  supervise  the  children  he  placed  in  their  community ;  but  that 
his  placing  was  done  so  well  that  he  never  had  any  unfavorable 
reports  from  his  supervisory  committees.  He  refused  to  discuss 
the  cases  of  the  children  I  had  found  in  Montgomery  county. 

A  few  weeks  later  I  visited  Huntington  county  and  found  the 
matron  of  the  orphan’s  home;  which  was  one  of  the  very  best  in 
the  state;  highly  incensed  against  the  Blank  Home  for  Blanks. 
She  said,  “Mr.  Johnson,  are  not  my  children  just  as  nice  as  those 
from  Boston?  Why  then  cannot  I  find  homes  for  them,  as  well 
as  that  preacher  does?”  I  said,  “Mrs.  Tremaine,  you  don’t  adver¬ 
tise  as  he  does.  You  don’t  preach  nor  show  your  goods  so  well. 
Besides  that  many  of  your  children  have  undesirable  relatives 
who  are  known  in  the  county  while  these  Boston  youngsters  have 
left  their  drunken  fathers  and  uncles  1,000  miles  behind  them. 
But  more  than  all,  you  are  particular  about  the  people  with  whom 
you  place  your  orphans.” 

Later  I  told  Kev.  Blank  that  the  Board  of  State  Charities 
was  contemplating  the  law,  afterwards  made,  for  the  registration 
of  children  brought  into  the  state,  and  he  agreed  to  comply  at 
once  with  that  requirement.  But  a  few  weeks  later  he  wrote 
from  Boston  that  his  board  of  directors  would  not  agree  to  the 
registration  plan ;  and  as  soon  as  the  state  law  was  enacted  that 
society  ceased  operations  in  Indiana. 

Between  1865  and  1891,  the  Children’s  Aid  Society  of  New 
York,  alone,  had  placed  more  than  2,000  children  in  Indiana; 
others  were  coming  from  Massachusetts,  and  from  Western  New 
York,  and  many  from  Ohio.  I  made  an  estimate  in  1891,  from 
the  best  data  obtainable,  that  the  total  number  brought  from 
states  east  of  Indiana;  from  the  time  the  New  York  society  set 
the  example;  was  probably  more  than  6,000.  About  the  time  I 
made  the  calculation,  a  member  of  the  House  who  was  eager  for 
a  reputation  as  a  reformer,  asked  me  for  the  exact  number  of 
children  who  had  been  imported.  I  told  him  precise  figures  were 
impossible  but  that  the  number  was  certainly  from  six  to  seven 
thousand.  In  a  speech  the  next  day,  he  told  his  fellow  legislators 


Dependent  Children 


155 


that  he  had  trustworthy  information,  that  in  thirty  years,  sixty- 
seven  thousand  dependent  children  had  been  brought  into  Indi¬ 
ana  from  the  East ! ! 

The  importation  of  dependent  children  was  checked  and 
almost  stopped  by  the  law  with  which  I  had  threatened  Rev. 
Blank.  It  did  not  forbid  the  benevolent  work  of  bringing  the 
waifs  of  crowded  cities  to  the  country,  where  they  could  have  a 
fair  chance  for  life.  It  merely  regulated  and  safeguarded  the 
activity  by  requiring  all  agencies,  bringing  children  into  the 
state  for  placement,  to  give  bond  against  their  becoming  paupers, 
and  to  register  each  child  and  its  foster  home  with  the  Board  of 
State  Charities.  This  was  suggested  to  and  carried  thru  the 
legislature  of  1895,  by  my  successor,  Ernest  P.  Bicknell;  who  in 
every  line  of  our  work  builded  well  on  every  good  foundation  I 
had  laid  and  on  many  other  good  ones  of  his  own  laying. 


r 


* 


Chapter  Ten 


AN  ADVENTURE  IN  POOR  RELIEF 

When  the  board  began  to  study  the  general  charity  situation 
of  the  state  one  important  feature  to  attract  attention  was  that 
of  outdoor  relief.  I  attempted  to  get  statisics  from  the  town¬ 
ship  trustees*  who  are  charged  with  the  duty  of  giving  it.  I 
sent  blanks  to  the  eleven  hundred  and  seven  trustees  asking  for 
a  report  upon  their  distribution  of  relief  for  the  past  year,  and 
got  fewer  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  replies,  only  a  few  of  which 
showed  any  intelligent  understanding  of  what  was  required.  I 
proceeded  to  collect  the  figures,  as  well  as  I  could,  from  the 
county  auditors,  and  in  most  cases  it  was  only  by  personal 
requests  at  their  offices  that  correct  and  complete  figures  could 
be  had,  and  often  not  even  then. 

The  information  collected  the  first  year  was  meager,  it  gave 
little  but  the  gross  sums  charged  against  the  county  funds  by 
the  trustees.  It  was  sometimes  possible  to  ascertain  the  separate 
cost  of  medical  relief,  since,  in  some  counties,  the  commissioners 
made  a  contract  with  a  physician  for  each  township  for  attend¬ 
ance  and  medicine  for  the  poor,  for  a  fixed  sum  per  annum. 

Meager  as  were  the  first  figures,  some  very  interesting  facts 
were  disclosed.  The  first  was  that  the  total  for  the  state  was 
much  larger  than  that  for  Ohio,  which  had  over  a  million  more 
people;  the  amount,  per  capita  of  the  total  population,  being 
more  than  double  that  of  our  neighbor  state.  The  second  was 
that  the  amount  in  different  counties  bore  no  apparent  relation  to 
other  conditions.  It  was  expected  that  the  counties  which 
included  large  towns  would  show  the  highest  per  capita  cost; 
thriving  agricultural  districts,  the  lowest.  But  none  of  these 
things  appeared.  The  county  whose  poor  relief  was  most  costly, 

♦Each  township  has  one  trustee  who  is  ex-officio  the  overseer  of  the 
poor  in  and  for  his  township. 


(156) 


A  n  Adventure  in  Poor  Relief 


157 


gave  nineteen  times  as  much,  per  capita  of  the  total  population, 
as  that  in  which  the  least  was  given;  yet  each  was  a  rural  com¬ 
munity.  It  seemed  certain  that  not  the  presence  nor  the  absence 
of  large  towns;  nor  the  irregularity  of  employment  in  certain 
industries;  nor  the  varying  habits  of  the  people — not  these,  nor 
any  of  them,  was  the  cause  of  the  varying  effects  seen,  but  chiefly, 
if  not  entirely,  the  difference  of  administration.  The  counties 
which  chose  to  make  paupers  had  many  and  those  which 
declined  that  industry,  had  few. 

In  our  second  annual  report  I  had  an  elaborate  statement  on 
poor  relief.  The  expenditures  of  the  counties  were  worked  out 
into  comparisons  of  total  expense;  of  cost  of  the  county  poor 
asylum ;  the  county  orphans  home ;  the  outdoor  relief.  When  one 
county  was  shown  to  be  giving  to  its  poor  no  less  than  $1.07  per 
capita  of  its  total  population,  the  county  paper  pointed  with 
pride  to  the  liberality  of  the  county  officials.  Of  course,  it  was 
a  pro-administration  paper  that  did  so. 

Public  attention  was  drawn  slowly  to  the  subject.  At  the 
first  meeting  of  the  State  Conference  of  Charities,  outdoor  relief 
elicited  a  long  discussion.  The  story  of  the  remarkable  reduction 
in  Indianapolis  was  recounted  as  one  of  the  world’s  classics  on 
the  subject.  This  had  occurred  in  1876-80,  when  an  enterprising 
and  intelligent  trustee,  using  good  business  methods,  reduced 
the  annual  distribution  of  outdoor  relief  in  Center  township, 
Marion  county,  which  had  then  a  population  of  about  80,000; 
from  $85,000.00  to  less  than  $12,000.00,  without  causing  any  addi¬ 
tional  suffering  and  without  increasing  the  population  of  the 
county  poor  asylum. 

A  committee  was  appointed  consisting  of  three  trustees,  one 
county  commissioner  and  myself,  to  present  a  careful  report  to 
the  next  Conference.  The  meeting  at  which  this  committee 
reported  was  a  convention  of  township  trustees  and  county 
commissioners,  called  by  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  in  1891. 
The  report  recounted  some  of  the  evils  arising  from  misused 
relief  and  urged  concerted  action  by  the  trustees.  It  recom¬ 
mended  that  the  principles  of  scientific  charity — full  investiga¬ 
tion,  accurate  registration,  co-operation  of  relief  agencies,  etc., — 
should  be  adopted  by  the  public  officials.  The  report  alleged  that 
if  this  were  done  a  saving  to  the  taxpayers  of  a  sum  of  any- 


158  Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 

where  from  $150,000.00  to  $250,000.00  per  annum  might  be  rea¬ 
sonably  expected.  Subsequent  experience  showed  that  this 
estimate  was  conservative. 

So  far  the  results  of  the  agitation  for  reform  were  not 
encouraging.  Although  the  years  1891  and  1892  were  generally 
prosperous,  still  the  total  of  outdoor  relief  increased.  Then 
came  the  panic  year  of  1893,  and  the  increase  was  rapid.  From 
this  point,  for  several  of  the  next  moves,  the  story  belongs  to  my 
successors*  who  carried  out  most  faithfully  every  line  of  policy 
I  had  begun;  however,  I  come  into  the  narrative  again  a  little 
later. 

The  statistics  collected  up  to  1894,  were  too  general  to  afford 
a  basis  for  action  or  for  very  positive  assertion.  But  in  1895,  the 
legislature,  on  the  request  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  made 
a  law  requiring  the  trustees  to  report  their  relief  to  the  county 
auditor  in  detail,  quarterly,  in  duplicate,  one  copy  to  go  to  the 
state  board.  Most  of  them  obeyed  promptly,  and  a  mass  of 
detailed  information  about  poor  relief  began  to  accumulate. 
Then  it  became  possible  to  make  intelligent  criticism ;  not  merely 
the  totals,  but  the  individual  cases  being  on  record.  The  results 
published  in  the  reports  of  the  board  make  wonderfully  interest¬ 
ing  reading. 

Still  many  trustees  and  some  auditors  refused  or  neglected 
to  make  reports,  until,  in  1897,  two  far  reaching  and  salutary 
laws  were  enacted.  One  of  these  required  each  township  to  pay 
for  its  own  poor,  by  a  special  township  levy  each  year,  sufficient 
to  reimburse  the  county  for  the  amount  it  had  advanced.  The 
second  provided  a  method  to  compel  officials  to  do  their  duty  by 
a  simple  and  easy  process  of  impeachment  before  the  circuit  court 
of  their  county.  Ernest  Bicknell  deserves  the  credit  of  both  of 
these  laws.  Since  the  impeachment  law  went  into  effect,  all  that 
was  needed  to  get  the  reports  was  to  allude  to  the  law. 

With  the  full  particulars  from  every  township  furnished;  in 
1897  and  1898,  the  facts  began  to  show  with  sunlight  clearness. 
It  appeared  that  townships  with  conditions  much  alike  varied 
enormously  in  the  number  of  paupers.  In  some  one  person  in 
every  eight  received  relief;  in  others  only  one  person  in  two 

♦The  successors  were  Ernest  P.  Bicknell  who  served  until  1897,  and 
Amos  W.  Butler,  who  followed  him  and  retired  Dec.  31st,  1922. 


An  Adventure  in  Poor  Relief 


159 


hundred  and  fifty  was  on  the  poor  books.  The  levies  for  poor 
relief  varied  from  as  low  as  three  mils  to  as  high  as  thirty  cents 
on  the  flOO.OO  valuation.  The  conviction  became  incontestable 
that  the  cause  of  these  differences  anvwhere,  and  of  the  excessive 
total  almost  everywhere,  was  to  be  found  in  the  varying  efficiency 
of  administration  and  nowhere  else.  This  was  so  plain  that  the 
wayfaring  man,  though  a  fool,  need  not  err  therein. 

So  far  in  Indiana  for  very  many  years,  the  township  trustee 
had  been  almost  a  law  unto  himself.  There  has  rarely  been  seen, 
in  a  free  government,  so  striking  an  example  of  one-man  power 
as  was  his  before  the  reform  acts  of  1899.  It  was  the  trustee’s 
duty  to  levy  taxes  and  to  spend  them,  with  little  check  upon  him 
but  that  of  public  opinion.  He  had  charge  of  the  schools,  the 
roads,  the  poor,  and  a  multitude  of  other  things.  He  made  con¬ 
tracts,  borrowed  money,  issued  bonds,  and  did  almost  all  business 
that  any  government  does,  with  little  control.  For  four  years, 
he  was  dictator.  He  appointed  teachers  and,  with  his  fellow 
trustees,  elected  the  county  superintendent  of  schools.  He  nomi¬ 
nated  drainage  commissioners  and  appointed  highway  super¬ 
visors.  In  theory  he  reported  to  the  county  commissioners,  but 
their  authority  and  control  were  much  hampered  by  both  law  and 
custom.  It  says  much  for  the  rugged  good  sense  and  honesty  of 
the  average  Hoosier  that  with  such  a  method  the  townships  were, 
as  a  whole,  decently  managed;  that  serious  scandals  were  few; 
that  taxes  were  not  crushing;  that  many  trustees  retired  without 
having  made  a  fortune  in  their  four  years  term. 

There  had  long  been  a  conviction  among  the  leaders  of  the 
state  that  amendment  was  needed  to  the  laws  about  both  the 
county  and  township  governments.  After  the  election  of  1898 
when,  for  the  first  time  for  some  years,  the  state  government  was 
to  be  wholly  of  one  party,  it  seemed  that  the  favorable  moment 
for  reform  had  come.  The  State  Board  of  Commerce,  a  body  made 
up  of  representatives  from  the  various  commercial  and  business 
men’s  clubs,  had  been  considering  reform  for  some  years.  The 
president  of  the  board,  a  far-seeing  and  public-spirited  man, 
interested  the  chairman  of  the  state  committee  of  the  party  in 
power,  who  called  a  meeting  of  members  of  the  house  and  senate 
representing  each  congressional  district.  To  this  meeting  the 


160 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


State  Board  of  Commerce,  the  State  Bar  Association  and  the 
State  Federation  of  Labor,  each  sent  seven  delegates. 

I  was  a  member  of  the  State  Board  of  Commerce,  as  repre¬ 
sentative  of  the  Commercial  Club  of  Fort  Wayne,  and  one  of  the 
seven  who  represented  it  on  the  committee.  The  large  committee 
met,  talked,  chose  a  good  chairman  and  a  small  executive  com¬ 
mittee,  and  adjourned.  The  small  committee  sub-divided  itself, 
drafted  bills,  got  them  introduced,  and  finally  lobbied  them  thru 
the  legislature. 

The  chief  reforms  proposed  and  adopted  were  of  a  thorough¬ 
going  character,  the  committee  felt  that  it  had  its  hands  full 
without  attacking  minor  matters.  So  far  nothing  had  been  said 
or  done  about  poor  relief.  Then  the  chairman  sent  for  me  (I  was 
then  superintendent  of  the  School  for  Feeble-Minded)  ;  and 
asked  me  to  head  a  special  sub  committee  to  draft  separate  bills, 
if  any  were  needed,  for  reform  of  the  administration  of  public 
charity.  I  accepted  the  call  with  much  reluctance.  I  felt  that 
with  my  own  institution  to  protect  I  had  no  time  nor  strength 
to  spare  for  other  legislation.  But  either  I  knew  something 
about  such  things  or  else  I  had  been  for  eight  years  past  pre¬ 
tending  to  knowledge  I  did  not  possess,  so  T  felt  constrained  to 
do  as  I  was  requested.  My  sub-committee  included  the  secretary 
of  the  leading  C.  O.  S.  in  the  state,  an  experienced  and  able  town¬ 
ship  trustee,  and  Amos  Butler,  secretary  of  the  Board  of  State 
Charities. 

I  drafted  three  bills  which  the  sub-committee  highly  approved. 
One  was  for  a  comprehensive  act  to  regulate  the  management 
of  county  asylums  for  the  poor,  an  act  which  has  worked  well, 
and  has  met  with  remarkably  little  criticism.  The  second  created 
Boards  of  County  Charities,  to  co-operate  with  the  state  board; 
the  third  regulated  outdoor  relief.  When  the  bills  were  presented 
to  the  executive  committee,  they  were  approved;  but  that  com¬ 
mittee  felt  it  had  all  the  load  it  could  carry  with  the  township 
and  county  government  bills,  and  the  chairman  reluctantly  told 
me  the  committee’s  decision.  I  told  him  I  was  satisfied;  I  had 
been  called  in  as  an  expert  and  had  done  my  work  as  such, 
because  the  product  was  to  be  laid  on  the  shelf  did  not  cause  any 
ill  feeling. 


An  Adventure  in  Poor  Relief 


161 


The  next  day  Butler  wrote  asking  if  I  would  object  to  him 
trying  what  he  could  do  with  my  bills.  T  replied  they  were  no 
longer  mine,  that  while  I  could  not  deny  their  paternity  they 
were  now  abandoned  children  of  my  brain  and  if  he  chose  to 
adopt  them  I  would  give  him  a  “quit  claim”.  So  he  got  them 
introduced,  one  in  the  senate,  and  two  in  the  house,  not  using 
my  name  as  author  publicly,  though  it  helped  a  little  in  private 
in  one  or  two  cases.  The  three  bills  went  through  the  legislative 
mill  as  though  the  hopper  had  been  greased  and  while  those  in 
charge  of  the  township  and  county  bills  were  sweating  blood  in 
committee  rooms  and  seeing  their  bills  so  mangled  by  amend¬ 
ments  that  their  own  authors  hardly  recognized  them,  my  bills, 
now  Butler’s,  were  being  signed  by  the  Governor  after  hardly 
the  slightest  amendment. 

The  new  laws  went  into  effect  in  the  summer  of  1899,  and  not 
until  the  close  of  the  county  fiscal  year,  on  May  31,  1900,  was  it 
possible  to  be  certain  of  their  results.  The  act  regulating  out¬ 
door  relief  prescribed  the  methods  with  which  every  student  of 
economic  science  is  familiar,  under  the  name  of  “charity  organi¬ 
zation:” — that  all  the  facts  concerning  poor  people  should  be 
known  to  those  who  would  really  help  them :  that  full  and  accu¬ 
rate  records  of  such  facts,  of  the  help  given  and  its  results,  must 
be  kept :  that  different  relief  agencies  working  in  the  same  terri¬ 
tory  will  do  more  harm  than  good  unless  they  act  in  harmonious 
co-operation:  that  natural  ties  of  kindred  are  of  immense  value 
and  should  be  conserved:  that  every  man’s  duty  is  to  help  him¬ 
self  if  he  can,  and  the  best  thing  his  fellow  can  do,  if  he  needs 
help,  is  to  help  him  to  help  himself :  that  the  acts  of  every  public 
official  shall  be  reported  to  somebody  so  that  there  shall  be  a 
system  of  check:  that  people  needing  help  should  get  it  where 
they  belong:  that  assisting  professional  beggars  to  travel  over 
the  land  at  public  expense  is  bad  business:  these  truisms  so 
familiar  to  every  worker  in  an  A.  C.  or  C.  O.  S. ;  so  often  ignored 
by  both  public  and  private  almsgivers,  were  organized  into  the 
law  which  governs  outdoor  relief  in  the  State  of  Indiana.  Since 
that  time,  the  bill  has  been  copied,  almost  verbally,  in  one  state, 
and  many  of  its  features  adopted  in  others.  It  is  not  an  unjust 
claim  that  Indiana  has  the  nearest  to  a  scientific  law  on  the 
subject  of  any  state  in  the  Union.  One  evidence  of  this  is  in  the 


162 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


fact  that  the  so-called  “mothers  pension  law” ;  which  provides 
for  nothing  but  outdoor  relief,  thinly  veiled ;  has  never  seemed 
necessary  in  the  state.* 

The  law  about  outdoor  relief  seemed  to  many  people,  espe¬ 
cially  public  officials,  too  drastic.  When  the  State  Conference 
of  Charities  of  1899  met,  a  few  months  after  the  law  had  gone 
into  effect  but  before  its  results  could  be  measured,  the  most 
doleful  forebodings  were  heard.  To  double  or  treble  the  popula¬ 
tion  of  all  the  poor  asylums  of  the  state  was  among  the  mildest 
evils  to  be  expected.  The  author  of  the  law  and  the  statesman 
who  enacted  it  were  called  visionaries,  fanatics,  hard-hearted, 
cruel.  I  was  present,  and  argued  for  the  law.  I  pointed  out  that 
it  did  not  abolish  outdoor  relief,  but  provided  that  every  proper 
case  should  receive  it;  but  I  told  them  that  while  all  of  social 
science  was  not  yet  known  some  of  its  laws  were  certain  and  one 
of  these  was  that  reduction  of  outdoor  relief  has  never  yet  caused 
an  increase  of  indoor  relief.  As  to  the  charge  of  cruelty  I  said 
I  believed  that  when  they  knew  the  name  of  the  author  whom 
they  denounced  they  would  change  their  opinion,  and  then 
declared,  "I  am  the  author  of  the  law”.  Then  some  of  them  said 
of  course  their  good  Alexander  Johnson,  whom  everybody  knew 
and  loved,  was  not  cruel,  but  he  surely  was  mistaken.  I  told 
them  to  wait  and  see. 

In  December  1900,  the  State  Conference  met  again.  Among 
the  papers  presented  was  one  by  Amos  Butler,  secretary  of  the 
State  Board,  upon  the  effects  of  the  new  law  regulating  outdoor 
relief.  The  story  was  simple,  brief  and  convincing.  A  compari¬ 
son  was  shown  of  the  total  expenditures  in  the  state  for  outdoor 
relief  and  medical  charity,  of  the  years  1895  and  1900.  The  com¬ 
parison  was  as  follows : 


$630,000.00 

210,000.00 


For  1895 
For  1900 


$420,000.00  per  annum. 


Saving 


During  the  same  period  the  number  of  inmates  in  county  poor 
asylums  had  diminished  from  14.8  to  12.3  in  each  10,000  of  the 
total  population. 

♦Since  this  was  written  events  have  made  a  modification  of  my  state¬ 
ment  necessary. 


An  Adventure  in  Poor  Relief 


163 


The  job  was  done  and  it  justified  the  long,  slow,  steady, 
patient  work.  It  was  the  work  of  the  State  Board,  begun  by  one 
secretary ;  carried  on  by  another ;  completed  by  a  third,  with  the 
help  of  the  first;  never  hasting;  never  resting;  steadily  pressing 
on;  always  ready  for  each  opportunity  to  gain  a  step  even  a 
small  one.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  at  the  State  Conference  last 
mentioned,  when  Butler,  the  third  secretary  in  the  sequence, 
read  the  report,  Bicknell,  the  second  one,  who  had  come  to  the 
state  for  the  Conference,  should  turn  to  me,  the  first  one,  who  sat 
just  behind  him,  and  say,  “old  man,  life  has  its  compensations”. 

It  only  remains  to  add  that  the  reform  has  been  permanent 
and  has  been  recognized.  At  the  National  Conference  of  Chari¬ 
ties  in  Philadelphia,  in  1906,  Governor  Hanley  of  Indiana,  speak¬ 
ing  in  praise  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  related  the  incident 
of  the  reform  of  outdoor  relief;  confirmed  the  statement  that  it 
was  a  saving  of  waste  and  had  not  caused  additional  suffering, 
and  declared  that  the  economy  in  ten  years  would  exceed  three 
million  dollars. 


Chapter  Eleven 


THE  STATE  CONFERENCE  AND  MY  SUCCESSOR 

An  important  function  of  a  Board  of  State  Charities  is  to 
inform  the  legislators,  and  to  lead  the  public  opinion  of  the  state, 
on  all  matters  which  come  within  its  purview.  The  board  makes 
no  laws  ;  its  function  is  observation;  advice;  leadership.  The 
strongest  force  in  a  democratic  state  is  that  of  public  opinion. 
This  influences  the  legislature ;  and  indeed,  without  it,  most  legis¬ 
lation  is  futile.  It  is  easy  to  make  laws,  but  without  the  approval 
and  good  will  of  the  people,  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to 
enforce  them. 

A  previous  chapter  shows  how  the  public  was  being  informed 
from  day  to  day  thru  the  newspapers,  and  much  of  the  success 
of  the  board  was  due  to  its  appeal  to  the  citizens  in  that  manner. 
But  it  seemed  necessary  to  go  further;  it  was  desirable  to  get 
the  people  who  were  interested  together,  so  that  they  might 
recognize  the  existence  of  that  public  opinion  which  they  shared. 
An  available  method  seemed  that  of  public  conferences,  and  with 
my  knowledge  of  what  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction  had  done  for  the  Nation,  I  saw  a  field  for  similar  work 
in  the  state. 

Early  in  1890,  the  board  acceded  to  my  proposal  to  call  a 
State  Conference,  which  was  the  first  of  its  kind  to  hold  regular 
meetings ;  altho  there  had  been  one  or  two  scattering  meetings  of 
the  sort  held  in  Wisconsin,  previously. 

The  purpose  of  a  State  Conference  is  much  the  same  for  the 
state  as  that  of  the  National  Conference  for  the  Nation,  but  it 
has  one  added  function.  It  acts:  First;  as  a  sort  of  annual 
stock-taking  of  the  social  welfare  of  the  community;  each  social 
agency,  public  or  private,  makes  its  report  on  the  work  it  is 
doing  and  the  results  obtained;  Second;  as  a  place  to  make 
known  and  to  popularize  all  measures  of  social  progress;  the 


(164) 


The  State  Conference  and  my  Successor 


165 


best  and  most  thoughtful  people,  both  from  the  state  and  abroad, 
are  invited  to  tell  the  best  they  know,  either  new  or  old.  The 
Third;  and  perhaps  most  important  function,  is  to  promote 
acquaintance  and  friendship  between  all  social  workers,  official 
and  voluntary,  so  as  to  make  their  mutual  relations  more  pleas¬ 
ant;  to  avoid  friction  and  misunderstanding  between  them. 
These  three  purposes,  especially  the  last,  have  been  well  fulfilled 
by  the  State  Conference  of  Indiana.  There  are  few  states  where 
the  relations  between  official  and  volunteer  workers  are  so  cor¬ 
dial;  however,  a  part  of  that  cordiality  is  due  to  the  native, 
wholesome  friendliness  of  the  Hoosier  character. 

When  I  planned  the  Conferences,  I  was  warned,  by  some  of 
the  elder  statesmen  of  the  National  Conference;  that  while  such 
meetings  might  be  of  benefit  to  the  state,  they  would  compete 
with  and  militate  against  the  National  Conference  and  so  do 
more  harm  than  good.  I  replied  that  the  results  would  be  the 
opposite,  that  people  would  catch  the  conference  idea  and  the 
national  membership  would  increase  most  in  those  states  in 
which  state  conferences  were  held.  The  results  showed  that  my 
judgment  was  sound. 

The  first  Conference  was  held  in  the  Senate  chamber  and 
about  seventy  people  attended.  John  R.  Elder  presided,  and  I 
was  secretary,  program-maker,  and  chairman  of  all  the  commit¬ 
tees,  all  in  one.  At  this  first  meeting,  the  agitation  began,  which 
led  to  the  great  reform  in  outdoor  relief  nine  years  later. 

In  1891,  as  the  National  Conference  was  in  Indianapolis  that 
year,  the  state  conference  was  omitted  but  there  was  instead  a 
meeting  of  county  commissioners  and  township  trustees,  for  the 
special  purpose  of  reform  of  public  relief. 

In  1892,  the  regular  conference  was  held  again,  and  it  has  been 
an  annual  event  for  thirty  years,  the  attendance  gradually 
increasing,  from  the  seventy  of  1890,  to  its  present  number  of 
about  six  to  seven  hundred.  Its  membership  is  about  equally 
divided  between  public  officials  and  representatives  of  voluntary 
agencies. 

From  the  very  first,  I  realized  that  the  work  of  our  Board 
was  not  confined  to  public  institutions,  authorized  by  law  and 
supported  by  taxation;  but  that  voluntary  organizations  have 
just  as  much  need  of  guidance  and  often  of  inspection.  The 


166 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


organic  law  said,  in  effect,  that  we  were  to  study  the  whole  field 
of  social  work.  When  I  was  engaged  in  a  hard  struggle  against 
adverse  circumstances,  as  secretary  of  the  A.  C.  of  Cincinnati; 
although  there  was  an  active  Board  of  State  Charities  of  Ohio, 
I  hardly  realized  its  existence;  it  gave  not  the  faintest  sign  of 
interest  in  the  city  society.  It  was  almost  equally  true  of  the 
State  Board  of  Illinois,  with  regard  to  the  C.  O.  S.  of  Chicago ; 
although  because  of  my  activity  in  the  National  Conference  I  had 
come  to  know  Dr.  Wines,  the  secretary  of  the  Illinois  Board.  He 
had  indeed  written  me  a  warning  letter  at  the  time  of  my  move 
to  Chicago,  telling  me  that  the  C.  O.  S.  was  doomed  to  failure; 
that  it  could  not  survive  the  opposition  of  the  Relief  and  Aid 
Society.  When  his  dire  forebodings  were  seen  to  be  unfounded 
and  the  C.  O.  S.  made  a  success,  he  quietly  left  it  alone;  perhaps 
because  the  superintendent  of  the  antagonistic  society  was  a 
member  of  his  board. 

Now  in  charge  of  a  Board  of  State  Charities ;  and  remember¬ 
ing  how  I  would  have  welcomed  the  help  which  the  Boards  of 
Ohio  and  Illinois  might  have  given  me  in  my  difficulties  in  those 
states ;  I  determined  that  no  struggling  voluntary  agency  should 
ever  hold  out  its  hands  to  me  in  vain  if  I  could  in  any  way  help 
it.  I  did  not  wait  for  invitations  but  made  the  first  advances. 
Opportunities  came  through  the  State  Conference  of  Charities 
to  which  special  invitations  were  always  sent  to  the  different 
voluntary  societies.  They  were  made  to  feel  that  they  were  rec¬ 
ognized  as  useful  parts  of  the  state’s  social  welfare  work. 

In  Indianapolis,  Terre  Haute,  Fort  Wayne,  Evansville,  and 
other  cities,  the  relief  societies  and  Associated  Charities  wel¬ 
comed  the  friendship  and  sought  the  advice  of  the  board  and  its 
secretary  and  were  always  well  represented  at  the  state  con¬ 
ference. 

The  plan  was  early  adopted  of  having  the  successive  meetings 
in  different  cities,  believing  that  so,  although  perhaps  the  attend¬ 
ance  at  each  single  conference  would  be  smaller,  in  the  course 
of  years  many  more  people  would  be  reached  than  if  all  were  at 
the  Capital.  I  was  president  when  it  met  in  Fort  Wayne  in 
1903,  just  after  I  had  left  the  State  School  for  Feeble  Minded. 

The  plan  adopted  for  these  conferences,  which  has  been  copied 
in  Ohio  and  some  other  states,  is  worth  noting.  The  conference 


The  State  Conference  and  my  Successor 


167 


begins  on  a  Saturday  evening;  with  a  program  made  especially 
attractive  to  the  people  of  the  city  where  it  is  held.  Then  on 
Sunday  morning  and  evening,  as  many  as  possible  of  the  pulpits 
of  the  city  are  occupied  by  conference  delegates.  Sunday  after¬ 
noon  a  mass  meeting  is  held,  at  which  some  leading  man,  often 
the  Governor,  speaks  on  a  vital  topic.  Then  Monday  morning 
the  regular  sessions  begin  lasting  through  Tuesday. 

The  conference  has  been  of  great  use  in  the  state  in  making 
the  work  of  the  board  popular  and  promoting  the  reforms  for 
which  it  stands.  It  has  been  copied  in  many  states  and  I  have 
often  been  invited  to  attend  and  speak  at  meetings  in  Maine, 
California,  Florida,  South  Dakota,  and  others  between.  For 
many  years,  I  was  a  regular  attendant  at  the  Virginia  Confer¬ 
ence,  which  began  in  1909.  Dr.  Mastin,  Secretary  of  the  Vir¬ 
ginia  State  Board,  always  invited  me,  especially  for  the  Sunday 
meetings,  usually  assigning  me  to  speak  at  a  church  of  the  col¬ 
ored  people.  On  one  such  occasion  in  Lynchburg,  I  expressed 
some  wonder  at  the  assignment  when  a  Negro  preacher  said 
“Brother  Johnson,  we  all  know  why  Brother  Mastin  sends  you 
to  preach  to  us  colored  folks,  it’s  because  you  talk  just  like  a 
colored  man”/ 

When  the  Committee  on  Provision  for  the  Feeble-Minded 
began  its  work,  the  state  conferences  were  always  used  by  that 
society  as  a  place  for  propaganda,  and  in  several  states  the  agi¬ 
tation  which  resulted  in  a  state  school  began  at  a  conference 
meeting. 

While  I  was  secretary  of  the  National  Conference,  the  execu¬ 
tive  committee  approved  of  my  keeping  in  close  touch  with  the 
state  conferences,  which  by  that  time  had  been  recognized  as  valu¬ 
able  adjuncts  to,  and  feeders  of,  the  national  body. 

It  is  interesting,  as  I  write  of  things  I  set  going  so  many 
years  ago,  to  be  invited  to  attend  and  speak  at  the  thirty-first 
session  of  the  Indiana  Conference  of  Charities;  and  to  be  asked 
to  dine  with  many  of  its  ex-presidents  and  four  of  the  five,  living, 

*1  am  told  by  a  Southern  friend  who  has  been  aiding  me  by  criticising 
this  writing,  that  the  above  is  a  usual  compliment  to  be  paid  by  a  Colored 
brother  to  a  White  speaker.  But  all  Southerners,  white  and  colored  alike, 
are  much  more  ready  to  pay  compliments  to  their  preachers,  than  are  the 
folks  north  of  Mason  and  Dixon’s  line.  (Always  excepting  my  beloved 
Hoosiers.) 


168 


Adventures  in  Inspection  and  Supervision 


Indiana  ex-presidents  of  the  National  Conference — Nicholson, 
Gavisk,  Butler  and  Bicknell ;  and  also  two  other  national 
ex-presidents,  from  other  states,  who  came  to  the  Indiana  Con¬ 
ference  as  a  good  place  to  hear  and  to  tell  of  progress  in  social 
work. 


The  Endino 

After  four  years  and  three  months  work,  my  adventures  in 
inspection  came  to  an  end.  There  was  trouble  in  the  School  for 
Feeble-Minded  and  a  new  superintendent  was  needed.  Gov. 
Mathews  asked  for  an  investigation  by  our  board,  but  he  said  he 
wished  to  make  a  personal  inquiry,  with  my  help,  before  the 
public  one  should  take  place.  While  we  were  there  together,  he 
and  Mr.  Hackett,  president  of  the  board  of  trustees,  urged  me  to 
become  superintendent  of  the  school.  When,  after  much  hesita¬ 
tion,  I  accepted,  the  Governor  said  “Now  not  a  word  to  the  public 
until  we  have  found  your  successor  as  secretary  and  I  want  you 
to  name  him”.  I  told  the  Governor  I  had  my  successor  chosen 
and  named  Ernest  Bicknell.  Two  years  before,  when  I  was  con¬ 
templating  a  move  to  Oregon  where  I  was  offered  a  rather 
attractive  position  ;  I  had  decided  that  Bicknell  would  make  a 
good  secretary  for  the  State  Board  if  I  resigned;  altho  I  did 
not  know  at  the  time,  nor  for  years  after  he  was  appointed,  that 
he  had  been  a  candidate  against  me  for  the  position  in  1889. 
Gov.  Mathews  said  “Bicknell  is  a  good  man.  I  know  him  well. 
But  Johnson,  what’s  his  politics?”  I  told  him  I  did  not  think 
he  had  any  to  hurt,  but  I  was  afraid  what  he  had  were  Repub¬ 
lican.  Then  said  Mathews,  and  it  was  a  good  deal  for  a  Demo¬ 
cratic  Governor  to  say  in  1893,  “well,  if  you  say  he  is  the  man  we 
will  appoint  him,  but  I  wish  you  could  have  picked  us  out  a  good 
strong  Democrat”. 

Then  came  the  job  of  getting  Bicknell,  who  was  established  in 
a  profitable  newspaper  business,  to  accept.  His  first  answer  was 
emphatically  “No,”  but  after  long  argument,  he  yielded.  The 
board  met,  accepted  my  resignation,  with  appropriate  compli¬ 
mentary  resolutions  of  regret,  and  elected  Bicknell;  and  the 
same  editions  of  the  newspapers  published  the  two  events 
together.  Certain  politicians  gnashed  their  teeth;  but  the  gen¬ 
eral  public,  led  by  the  best  of  the  newspaper  men  with  whom 


The  State  Conference  and  my  Successor 


169 


Bicknell  was  very  popular,  warmly  approved  both  appointments. 

Bicknell  made  an  excellent  secretary  and  the  board  went  on 
with  undiminished  success,  deserving  and  continuing  to  receive 
the  confidence  of  the  state.  Every  plan  and  method  I  had  begun, 
my  successor  continued  and  improved  upon.  There  is  not  and 
has  never  been  a  more  useful  board  of  the  kind  in  the  United 
States.  It  began  right  and  has  continued  right  and  after  thirty- 
four  years  it  has  still  only  its  fourth  secretary.  Each  of  its  first 
three  secretaries  and  three  of  its  members  have  been  honored  by 
election  as  president  of  the  National  Conference,  and  Amos  W. 
Butler,  has  also  been  president  of  the  National  Prison  Associa¬ 
tion.  The  enviable  reputation  of  Indiana  in  social  work  is 
largely  due  to  the  way  the  Board  of  State  Charities  has  made 
known  and  has  carried  into  effect,  the  wishes  and  desires  of  the 
best  people  of  the  state. 


'  * 


■ 


t 


PART  THREE 


ADVENTURES  AMONG  THE  FEEBLE  MINDED 


(171) 


» 


ADVENTURES  AMONG  THE  FEEBLE  MINDED 


Chapter  One 

BEGINNING  THE  ADVENTURES 

Ten  wonderful  years  of  my  life  were  those  I  spent  among  the 
Feeble  Minded;  years  filled  with  hard  work  and  anxiety,  but 
also  with  the  satisfaction  that  comes  of  a  clear  and  definite 
purpose  carried  out  with  a  fair  measure  of  success.  I  had  an 
opportunity  to  do  a  piece  of  positive  social  work  as  it  had  not 
been  done  before  in  the  state  and  hardly  anywhere;  work  of  high 
economic  value  to  the  public  and  which  might  bring  much  added 
happiness  to  those  who  were  the  subjects  of  it. 

The  way  in  which  my  appointment  as  superintendent  of  the 
Indiana  School  for  Feeble  Minded  came  about  is  interesting  and 
it  is  important  because  much  of  the  early  strength  of  my  admin¬ 
istration  came  out  of  it.  I  had  been  for  more  than  four  years, 

the  secretarv  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities  and  had  been  sue- 
«/ 

cessful  in  gaining  in  good  measure  the  confidence  of  the  state 
for  the  Board  and  also  for  myself.  In  the  Spring  of  1893,  a  seri¬ 
ous  scandal  occurred  in  the  school  at  Ft.  Wayne  and  Governor 
Mathews  called  on  our  Board  for  an  investigation;  he  thought 
the  superintendent,  who  was  charged  with  criminal  practices, 
should  be  exposed  and  prosecuted.  The  alleged  crimes  were  of  a 
revolting  nature;  the  guilty  man  had  confessed  and  left  the  insti¬ 
tution;  he  apparently  had  lost  his  reason;  at  any  rate  at  the 
time  of  the  disclosure  he  was  a  patient  at  n  private  sanatorium 
for  the  insane  in  a  neighboring  state. 

I  argued  with  the  Governor  that  it  would  be  bad  policy  to 
make  the  matter  any  more  public  than  could  be  helped;  that  . 
many  thousand  young  people  in  the  state,  and  older  ones  also, 
had  never  heard  of  the  kind  of  offenses  alleged ;  that  the  results 
of  wide  publication  of  the  details,  which  a  prosecution  would 


(173 


174 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


involve,  would  be  demoralizing  in  the  extreme.  Reluctantly  the 
Governor  agreed  to  reduce  his  demands  on  our  Board;  allowing 
the  guilty  man’s  confession  and  surrender  to  be  accepted  as  proof 
and  his  incarceration  in  the  hospital  for  the  insane  to  be  reason 
for  not  prosecuting;  only  making  sure  that  no  other  official  of 
the  school  was  involved. 

Then  Mr.  Mathews  told  me  that  before  our  Board  made  the 
investigation,  he  wanted  to  visit  the  institution  in  my  company, 
to  see  for  himself  how  things  were.  So  he  and  T  went  to  Fort 
Wayne  and  spent  a  day  at  the  school  and  I  convinced  him  that 
with  the  exception  of  what  had  been  charged  against  the  superin¬ 
tendent  the  institution  was  in  fair  order. 

During  the  course  of  our  journey  Mr.  Mathews  asked  me  to 
suggest  some  one  for  the  vacancy  and  a  name  was  mentioned, 
but  the  Governor  said  he  knew  the  man  and  that  he  would  not 
do.  After  our  visit  of  inspection  on  our  way  to  the  train  with 
Mr.  Hackett,  president  of  the  Board  of  Trustees,  Mr.  Mathews 
again  asked  me  to  name  a  man.  Mr.  Hackett  said,  “I  know  the 
man,  but  I  don’t  know  whether  he  will  accept”.  Mathews  said, 
“I  know  him  and  this  is  he”,  slapping  me  on  the  knee.  I  replied 
that  I  was  not  the  man  and  could  not  consider  the  position.  In 
answer  to  the  question,  “why  not?”,  I  said  that  I  was  not  a 
physician.  Mr.  Hackett  said,  “We  have  never  had  a  doctor  as 
superintendent  and  do  not  want  one”.  Then  I  said  my  family 
was  too  large,  to  which  the  Governor  replied,  “I  don’t  know  how 
many  children  you  have  but  if  they  are  all  like  the  one  I  know 
I  congratulate  you  on  the  number,”  (my  eldest  daughter  was  my 
clerk  in  the  State  Board  office  and  was  popular  in  the  State 
House.)  Then  I  said  that  I  did  not  want  to  give  up  my  position 
as  secretary  and  that  I  thought  he  would  have  more  trouble 
filling  that  position  than  he  would  the  other.  But  the  Governor 
did  not  think  so,  he  insisted  that  the  institution  was  under  a 
cloud  and  the  circumstances  made  it  essential  to  get  a  well-known 
man  in  whom  the  public  had  confidence,  to  restore  it  to  public 
favor.  He  added,  “we  will  not  accept  your  decision  today.  We 
will  give  you  ten  days  in  which  to  make  up  your  mind.  Talk 
it  over  with  your  wife  and  daughter  and  come  to  me  with  your 
answer  next  Saturday  week.  In  the  meantime  conduct  this 
investigation.” 


Beginning  the  Adventures 


175 


It  was  a  hard  matter  to  decide.  The  position  paid  a  little 
better  than  the  one  I  held;  the  compliment  of  the  offer  made  in 
such  a  way,  was  flattering.  But  in  a  sense  it  was  not  a  promo¬ 
tion;  it  was  moving  from  the  general  to  a  particular.  When 
Hastings  Hart  heard  of  the  change  he  resented  it.  He  said, 
“if  you  need  more  money  go  into  life  insurance,  with  your  smooth 
tongue  and  your  insinuating  manner,  you  can  make  five  times  as 
much”.  Other  friends  regretted  the  change  as  a  step  downward. 
However  I  decided  and  on  the  appointed  day  I  notified  the 
Governor  of  my  acceptance. 

Mr.  Hackett’s  opinion  as  to  the  necessity  of  a  physician  as 
superintendent  was  founded  on  the  fact  that  a  school  for  the 
feeble-minded  is  not  a  medical  institution  and  that  there  is  no 
more  reason  for  its  superintendent  being  a  physician  than  there 
is  for  that  of  a  school  for  the  deaf,  the  blind,  or  the  wayward. 
The  essential  qualities  required  for  the  position  are  executive 
ability  and  a  comprehension  and  love  of  social  welfare  work. 
The  superintendent  must  have  a  broad  and  statesmanlike  com¬ 
prehension  of  the  policy  of  the  state  in  caring  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded,  and  be  resourceful  in  devising  methods  to  carry  it  out. 
He  must  be  able  to  meet  and  understand  all  sorts  of  people,  many 
'  of  them  in  sore  trouble;  to  organize  and  control  the  work  of 
doctors,  teachers,  mechanics,  farmers,  book-keepers  and  many 
other  subordinates;  and  also  to  guide  his  trustees  in  the  way 
they  should  go. 

In  every  large  school  of  the  kind  where  the  superintendent  is 
a  medical  man,  the  actual  medical  work,  which  tho  important  is 
not  of  chief  importance,  is  done  by  his  assistants.  It  is  true  that 
there  are  many  admirable  superintendents  of  such  schools  who 
are  physicians,  but  the  reason  for  their  success  is  not  their  med¬ 
ical  but  their  executive  and  social  ability. 

The  chief  executive  of  an  institution  must  be  an  economist — 
of  time,  of  labor,  and  of  money.  The  highly  trained  physician, 
by  his  very  training,  considers  and  can  consider  none  of  these; 
all  he  can  think  of  is  the  best  results  to  his  patients  regardless 
of  labor  or  expense.  Suppose  an  executive  of  an  institution  with 
1700  inmates  and  300  employees,  while  maintaining  the  standard 
of  nutrition  and  palatableness  of  the  diet,  could  reduce  its  daily 
per  capita  cost  by  only  two  cents.  That  would  mean  a  saving  of 


176 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


$14,600  per  annum.  It  might  result  in  coming  out  even  with  the 
appropriation  instead  of  facing  a  deficit  at  the  end  of  the  year. 
But  imagine  a  Board  of  Trustees  confronted  by  rising  prices  of 
provisions,  presenting  to  a  highly  trained  physician  the  problem 
of  saving  two-thirds  of  a  cent  on  each  child’s  meal ! !  And  simi¬ 
lar  questions  of  economy  arise  in  many  other  departments  of  an 
institution. 

There  might  be  a  good  reason  for  insisting  on  the  superin¬ 
tendent  of  a  school  for  feeble-minded  being  an  educator  or  a 
psychologist;  but  there  is  no  reason  but  custom  for  requiring 
that  he  be  a  physician. 

The  institution  of  the  kind  which  has  gained  the  highest  repu¬ 
tation;  which  has  added  more  to  our  knowledge  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded  than  any  other;  which  was  the  first  to  employ  a  trained 
psychologist  as  a  regular  member  of  the  staff;  which  has  done 
more  than  any  other  to  develop  the  science  of  the  training  of 
children  with  defective  minds;  which,  in  its  summer  school,  has 
equipped  more  teachers  of  classes  for  defectives  than  all  other 
agencies  put  together;  has  not  now,  and  never  has  had  a  physi¬ 
cian  as  superintendent.  It  is  difficult  enough  for  trustees  to  find 
a  competent  man  for  such  a  position.  When  to  the  essential 
qualities  they  add  unnecessary  requirements  they  increase  their 
difficulties  unnecessarily. 

When  I  took  charge  on  July  1,  1893,  I  had  been  visiting  and 
inspecting  the  School  for  more  than  four  years  and  I  had  many 
ideas  about  how  it  ought  to  be  conducted.  During  my  adminis¬ 
tration  I  was  able  to  carry  out  some  of  these  ideas  fully,  some 
things  I  began  and  could  not  finish  and  some  of  my  theories 
proved  untenable.  But  at  the  end  of  my  ten  years  service  I  was 
still  convinced  of  the  validity  of  most  of  the  principles  with 
which  I  began. 

The  School  was  comparatively  new  in  the  state  and  it  had 
not  been  made  popular,  few  people  realized  its  necessity,  hardly 
any  its  possible  value.  In  1893,  feeble  mindedness  had  been  little 
studied,  in  Indiana  or  elsewhere.  It  was  true  that  the  trustees 
had  begun  to  realize  that  state  care  of  the  feeble-minded  did  not 
mean  merely  education,  but  ought  to  include  permanent  control 
for  many  cases;  they  had  succeeded  in  changing  the  law  which 
formerly  required  them  to  dismiss  their  pupils  when  of  legal  age. 


Beginning  the  Adventures 


177 


But  the  conception  that  the  feeble-minded  never  come  of  age ;  that 
they  should  have  a  training  that  would  qualify  them  to  become 
useful  members  of  a  little  community  apart  from  the  world  of 
eager  competition,  and  such  continuous  control  that  the  propa¬ 
gation  of  their  kind  should  cease,  had  not  entered  the  minds  of 
the  lawmakers  nor  of  the  trustees  of  the  institution. 

These  two  conceptions — training  in  usefulness  and  perma¬ 
nent  control — had  been  growing  in  my  mind  since  the  beginning 
of  my  visits  of  inspection,  and  they  were  the  dominating  theories 
of  my  administration.  The  success  or  failure  of  each  new  experi¬ 
ment  I  made  was  measured  by  its  bearing  on  these  main  ideas. 

There  is  much  we  do  in  social  work  with  a  certain  questioning. 
The  danger  of  doing  for  people  what  they  ought  to  do  for  them¬ 
selves  is  always  present.  And  this  applies  not  only  to  material 
things;  about  these  every  thoughtful  person  realizes  the  danger 
of  possible  pauperization  which  inheres  in  many  forms  of 
so-called  charity.  But  there  is  a  higher  pauperism,  that  of  the 
mind  and  spirit,  not  always  seen  as  a  danger.  It  may  be  even 
worse  to  destroy  independence  of  thought  and  feeling  than  self- 
reliance  for  material  support.  In  all  institutions,  especially 
those  for  children,  such  dangers  threaten.  The  term  “institu- 
tionism”  is  recognized  as  denoting  something  to  be  feared  and 
avoided. 

But  in  work  for  the  feeble-minded  all  this  disappears.  They 
are  children  now  and  always  will  be.  The  sooner  they  are  insti- 
tutionized;  that  is  the  sooner  they  learn  to  yield  to  the  kindly 
direction  of  those  who  care  for  them,  the  better.  They  should 
never  go  into  the  outside  world  as  free  citizens  with  all  that  that 
implies.  Some  one  must  always  think  for  and  direct  them;  so 
for  them  independence  and  self  reliance  are  not  the  paramount 
virtues. 

I  saw  the  two  things,  Training  and  Control,  to  be  interdepend¬ 
ent.  Altho  no  one  then  had  an  accurate  idea  of  the  enormous 
numbers  of  mentally  defective  people,  it  was  already  plain  that 
there  were  far  more  of  them  than  the  state  would  ever  be  willing 
to  support  in  any  such  degree  as  it  was  supporting  the  insane. 
Yet  I  believfed  that  their  control  was  even  more  important  to  the 
state  than  that  of  the  insane;  that  they  constituted  a  graver 
source  of  danger.  Not  danger  from  the  acts  of  the  individuals, 


178 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


altho  even  in  this  respect  there  is  often  much  to  be  dreaded ;  some 
atrocious  crimes  have  been  committed  by  imbeciles  who  should 
have  been,  and  were  not,  under  safe  control.  At  the  time  the 
boy  Pomeroy  perpetrated  the  horrible  cruelties  for  which  he  has 
been  kept  in  prison  all  his  long  life,  his  name  was  on  the  waiting 
list  of  the  School  for  Feeble  Minded  at  Waverly.  But  great 
criifies  are  not  frequent  and  even  lesser  offenses  and  misde¬ 
meanors  are  not  much  more  common  with  the  mentally  defective 
than  with  persons  of  normal  mind.  The  overmastering  danger 
is  of  the  increase  of  defectiveness  thru  heredity.  Only  a  few  of 
the  insane  inherit  their  affliction;  but  certainly  two-thirds,  and 
possibly  more  of  the  feeble-minded  come  of  parents  of  the  same 
kind.  And  while  there  may  be  a  third  of  the  present  generation 
whose  defectiveness  has  had  some  other  cause  than  heredity,  yet 
hardly  any  of  them  if  they  become  parents  will  have  normal  chil¬ 
dren.  No  other  trait  either  mental  or  physical  is  so  certainly 
inherited  as  this  we  call  feeble-miindedness. 

So  the  problem  that  confronted  the  state  seemed  to  me  to  be, 
how  to  secure  complete  control  without  the  excessive  cost  of 
total  support ;  and  I  thought  the  answer  was  by  training  many, 
perhaps  most,  of  the  feeble-minded  to  earn  their  own  living;  and 
then  retaining  them  under  permanent  institution  care,  in  useful, 
even  profitable,  employment.  I  believed  that  just  in  proportion 
as  this  could  be  demonstrated  as  feasible,  it  would  be  possible 
to  induce  the  state  to  assume  the  whole  burden  of  their  care. 

This  third  part  of  my  book  of  Adventures  is  mainly  devoted 
to  showing  how  I  thought  this  should  be  done,  how  I  tried  to  do 
it  and  how  the  happiness  of  the  children,*  was  promoted  by 
what  I  did.  I  shall  often  have  to  show  results  rather  than  the 
methods  used  to  secure  them.  But  whatever  the  subject  treated, 
the  influence  of  the  two  dominating  principles  will  be  apparent, 
so  there  will  be  no  need  of  a  special  chapter  devoted  to  them. 

As  I  say  in  my  prologue,  because  I  want  to  be  useful  to  the 
social  workers  for  whom  I  write,  I  shall  frankly  tell  of  much 

*The  inmates  of  an  institution  for  the  feeble-minded,  because  they  are 
and  always  will  be  immature  in  mind,  are  spoken  of  as  “the  children’', 
even  when  they  appear  mature  or  elderly,  men  and  women  in  body;  any¬ 
one  who  wants  to  understand  them  and  what  must  be  done  for  and  with 
them  must  begin  by  getting  this  fundamental  proposition  into  his  mind; 
“they  are  and  always  will  be  children,  in  heart,  mind,  and  responsibility.” 


Beginning  the  Adventures 


179 


gratifying  success:  but  also,  as  frankly,  of  some  disappointing 
failures ;  some  because  of  other  people’s  shortcomings ;  some  from 
errors  of  my  own ;  some  from  circumstances  beyond  my  control ; 
but  some  because  I  allowed  apparent  expediency  to  over-rule  my 
judgment,  and  was  not  faithful  to  the  best  I  knew. 


Chapter  Two 


ADVENTURES  IN  EDUCATION 

I  knew  when  I  took  charge  of  the  institution  that  the  educa¬ 
tional  department  needed  more  than  improvement,  that  it  had 
to  be  revolutionized.  The  school  principal  was  an  elderly,  good 
hearted  woman,  who  might  have  made  a  fairly  competent  head 
for  a  district  school  of  three  or  four  rooms.  She  was  pathetically 
inadequate  for  the  specialized  and  varied  requirements  of  a 
school  for  the  feeble-minded.  The  classes  were  twice  too  large. 
None  of  the  teachers  had  had  special  training.  In  those  days 
training  for  such  special  teaching  was  unknown,  except  as  given 
in  the  institutions  themselves.  There  was  a  good  kindergarten, 
but  only  for  the  youngest,  the  idea  had  not  dawned  that  the 
kindergarten  theory  is  needed  up  thru  the  highest  grades  and 
that  the  industries  are  the  high  school  of  the  feeble-minded. 

Shortly  after  I  took  charge  I  had  a  letter  from  the  parent  of 
an  inmate,  which  contained  a  salutary,  tho  rather  caustic, 
lesson.  The  parents,  or  those  of  them  who  showed  any  interest 
in  their  children,  were  receiving  monthly  reports  on  their  chil¬ 
dren’s  progress,  written  by  the  teachers.  The  letter  came  in 
answer  to  one  of  these,  as  follows;  “Dear  Sir:  My  wife  and  I 
are  deeply  grateful  for  all  you  are  doing  for  our  poor  boy,  and  we 
think  you  are  doing  as  well  as  you  know.  But  we  would  rather 
hear  that  Charley  is  learning  to  do  some  useful  thing  than  that 
he  is  acquiring  the  alphabet  at  the  rate  of  one  letter  a  month.” 
This  was  severe  but  not  a  bit  more  so  than  was  deserved. 

The  work  had  to  be  radically  reorganized  and  the  way  how 
learned  while  doing  it.  In  1893  Ireland’s,  Barr’s  and  other 
books  on  training  feeble  minds  were  in  the  future.  Seguin’s 
first  treatise  was  the  best  and  it  was  almost  alone.  Schools 
in  other  states  were  doing  work  much  like  ours  and  we 
learned  from  them  as  far  as  we  could  but  it  was  distinctly  a 


(180) 


Adventures  in  Education 


181 


period  of  experimentation.  Experiments  had  to  be  tried  and 
those  which  failed  promptly  scrapped.  It  might  be  necessary  to 
condemn  some  new  plan  almost  before  it  got  going.  This  is  a  dan¬ 
gerous  condition  for  a  superintendent,  whose  success  depends  on 
keeping  the  respect  and  confidence  of  his  staff.  When  they 
imagine  that  “the  old  man  does  not  know  his  own  mind”,  loyalty 
has  departed  and  loyalty  is  the  supreme  institution  virtue. 

In  this  emergency  I  sent  for  a  young  man  of  more  than  ordi¬ 
nary  ability,  upon  whose  persistent  loyalty  under  the  most  trying 
circumstances  I  could  absolutely  depend.  He  was  my  wife’s 
brother  and  in  engaging  him  I  had  to  risk  the  charge  of  nepotism, 
which  was  indeed  made  by  some  of  my  enemies ;  and  I  was  for¬ 
tunate  enough  to  have  made  some  tho  still  more  fortunate  to 
have  made  more  friends. 

Edward  R.  Johnstone  who  is  recognized  today  as  the  most 
constructive  and  aggressive  leader  in  the  training  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded  in  this  country,  if  not  in  the  world;  who  has  put  Vine- 
land  on  the  map;  was  teaching  literature  in  a  Cincinnati  High 
School.  He  had  the  qualities  most  needed,  youth,  energy, 
resourcefulness,  a  sunny  disposition,  a  fairly  good  education,  and 
most  needful  of  all  under  the  peculiar  circumstances,  a  devotion 
and  loyalty  to  his  chief  which  never  failed,  even  when  the  chief 
had  to  deny  requests  for  equipment  that  seemed  essential  or  to 
change  his  mind  twice  in  one  day.  It  has  been  my  good  fortune 
to  have  done  some  useful  things  in  developing  social  work,  but 
not  one  of  them  has  had  happier  results  than  came  out  of  getting 
E.  R.  Johnstone  into  the  work  of  caring  for  the  feeble-minded. 

I  installed  Mr.  Johnstone  as  principal  and  for  four  years  we 
worked  together  in  perfect  harmony.  Many  new  plans  were 
tried ;  developed  when  they  proved  adequate  but  quickly  dropped 
if  error  was  discovered.  Some  of  the  old  teachers  resented  the 
new  schemes  and  a  few  of  them  resigned.  New  teachers  were 
trained.  The  period  of  change  was  a  trying  one  and  without 
absolute  confidence  between  the  superintendent,  the  matron,  and 
the  principal  success  could  not  have  been  achieved.  But  fortu¬ 
nately  all  three  had  no  ambition  or  desire  but  the  benefit  of  the 
children  for  whom  the  institution  existed,  in  all  things  their 
welfare  and  progress  came  first.  This  spirit  spread  thru  every 
part  of  the  organization;  it  was  felt  by  the  most  subordinate 


182 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


employees  and  became  the  test  by  which  every  method  was  meas¬ 
ured,  not  alone  in  the  educational  department  but  in  every  other. 

The  spirit  of  the  school  was  that  of  Encouragement.  Praise 
was  frequent,  blame  seldom  heard.  The  child’s  first  feeble 
attempts  might  be  poor  indeed,  but  if  they  were  his  best  they 
were  good,  for  him.  The  most  valuable  habit  a  child  can  acquire 
is  that  of  success,  and  that  especially  needs  to  be  instilled  in  the 
little  imbecile,  whose  whole  life  until  he  comes  to  us  has  been  a 
succession  of  failures.  If  one  in  the  upper  grade  presented  a 
written  spelling  lesson  of  twelve  words,  the  teacher  would  say, 
“good  boy,  you  have  eight  words  right !  Now  tomorrow  let’s  try 
if  we  can’t  have  ten  words  right  or  even  all  twelve.”  The  differ¬ 
ence  between  “eight  words  right”,  with  a  smile  and  “four  words 
wrong”,  with  a  frown,  was  the  difference  between  happiness  and 
disappointment  if  not  sorrow. 

Because  we  must  be  sure  not  to  ask  the  child  for  something 
beyond  his  ability  and  so  cause  him  to  fail,  he  must  be  studied 
and  his  capacity  measured  in  every  respect,  mental  and  physical 
equally.  This  was  before  G.  Stanley  Hall  gave  the  pedagogic 
world  his  luminous  idea  of  “Child  Study” — that  the  teacher  must 
study  the  child  to  know  his  possibilities  and  weaknesses,  to 
adapt  her  teaching  to  the  individual,  not  to  some  theoretical 
“average  child”,  who  at  seven  years  of  age  ought  to  be  able  to 
profit  by  the  curriculum  of  the  second  grade  as  prescribed  by  the 
State  Department  of  Education.  The  schools  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded  had  adopted  the  method  of  child  study  before  it  was 
given  as  a  duty  to  the  teachers  of  the  normal.  One  of  E.  R. 
Johnstone’s  favorite  maxims  to  the  teachers  was  that  we  are  not 
teaching  “reading  and  writing”,  but  “children”  and  to  teach 
them  we  had  to  know  them. 

In  those  days  we  had  not  the  copious  literature  about  the 
mentally  defective  which  every  teacher  may  now  profit  by  if  she 
will.  We  had  not  even  the  Binet  system  of  measuring  intelli¬ 
gence.  But  we  used  simple  methods  of  our  own  devising.  Many 
of  them  were  those  of  trial  and  error,  but  we  did  get  results.  We 
soon  discovered  the  value  of  the  affirmative,  the  uselessness  of 
negations.  As  far  as  possible  the  child  was  never  told  NOT  to 
do  something,  but  always  to  DO  some  other. 


Adventures  in  Education 


183 


It  is  hard  for  one  with  no  experience  among  defectives  to 
realize  what  they  must  be  taught.  We  had  many  who  could 
hardly  walk,  many  who  shuffled  along,  their  feet  never  leaving 
the  floor,  not  because  of  defect  of  muscle  or  nerve  but  of  habit. 
So  contrivances  were  made,  steps  to  go  up  and  down,  ladders 
with  flat  rungs  to  lay  on  the  floor  to  step  into,  out  of  or  over. 
Few  of  the  imbeciles  had  any  idea  of  play.  Now  play  is  the 
normal  activity  of  the  child,  the  most  important  thing  in  the 
most  formative  period  of  life.  So  teaching  to  play  was  as  careful 
and  dignified  a  job  as  teaching  to  sew  or  read. 

We  realized  that  our  task  was  to  develop  the  whole  being, 
physically,  intellectually,  and  spiritually.  Physical  training 
began  with  good,  well  chosen  food  and  wisely  adapted  exercise. 
The  shambling,  unsteady  gait  must  be  changed  to  an  erect  and 
cheerful  walk.  The  limp  and  nerveless,  or  all  too  nervous,  hand 
must  be  strengthened  and  steadied.  The  eyes  must  be  trained 
to  see,  the  ears  to  hear,  the  senses  of  taste  and  smell  must  be 
cultivated.  With  physical  training  education  of  the  intellect 
and  the  emotions  goes  hand  in  hand.  In  every  form  of  exercise 
and  instruction  the  order  is  from  the  larger  more  obvious  and 
simple,  very  slowly  to  the  finer,  more  delicate,  more  complex. 
Not  merely  much  repetition  but  quantity  of  sense  impression  is 
needed.  The  color  blocks  must  be  larger,  the  sounds  more  posi¬ 
tive,  the  contrasts  greater,  than  for  normal  children. 

Many  of  the  children  came  with  what  little  mental  power 
they  had  in  a  kind  of  comatose  condition.  Our  first  task  was  to 
waken  them  up.  Some  of  the  methods  employed  were  simple 
enough,  but  great  patience  was  needed  in  applying  them.  One 
of  the  early  plans  was  ball  tossing.  The  child  stood  near  the 
wall  and  the  teacher,  a  few  feet  away,  tossed  a  large  soft  ball  to 
him,  striking  him  on  the  head  or  the  breast  or  the  face.  After 
fifty  or  a  hundred  times,  he  might  put  out  his  hands  to  ward  it 
off,  after  another  hundred,  he  might  actually  catch  it.  One  day 
passing  the  school  hall  I  heard  a  child  shrieking  as  tho  badly 
hurt.  I  hurried  in  to  find  what  was  the  matter.  Little  Harold 
had  caught  the  ball;  his  shrieks  were  of  joy.  For  the  first  time 
in  his  life  he  had  actually  made  a  purposive  effort,  he  had  con¬ 
sciously  tried  to  do  something  and  had  done  it.  That  tiny  effort 
was  the  beginning  of  a  little  development. 


184 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


In  the  kindergarten  and  in  other  classes  the  child  was  taught 
to  make  something  which  he  could  see  and  recognize  as  his 
handiwork  when  it  was  finished.  What  a  feeble-minded  child 
learns  to  say  he  quickly  forgets,  what  he  learns  to  do  he  remem¬ 
bers.  So  learning  by  doing  was  our  plan.  This  was  carried  up 
thru  all  the  grades.  The  lower  classes  prepared  for  the  higher 
and  those  for  the  industrial  departments.  Our  scholars  began 
in  those  as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough,  dividing  their  time 
between  the  classes  and  the  industries  for  several  years  before 
their  schooling  was  over. 

Our  highest  school  standard  to  which  only  a  few  of  the 
brightest  morons  attained  was  equal  to  that  of  the  usual  seventh 
grade.  Reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  had  modest  places  in 
the  school  curriculum;  not  nearly  so  important  as  those  of  sew¬ 
ing,  wood  work,  or  domestic  science.  The  sewing  class  prepared 
for  the  dress  making  room  and  the  tailor  shop ;  sloyd  for  the  car¬ 
penter’s  and  shoe-maker’s  shop;  domestic  science  for  the  kitchen 
and  dining  room ;  the  school  gardens  for  the  farm. 

We  fairly  tried,  and  often  with  more  than  useful  persever¬ 
ance,  to  teach  each  child  to  read,  not  for  the  value  of  reading  to 
them  for  that  is  nil  in  most  cases,  but  to  placate  the  parents  who 
could  not  understand  a  school  which  did  not  teach  the  “three 
R’s”.  I  made  many  efforts  to  cultivate  a  love  for  and  a  habit  of 
reading  and  in  nothing  had  I  so  little  success.  I  specially  wanted 
it  to  fill  in  the  most  difficult  period  in  all  the  institution  day, 
the  hour  between  supper  and  bed.  I  bought  the  most  attractive 
books  I  could  find  and  tried  out  one  plan  after  another  until  I 
gave  up  in  despair. 

Music  had  a  large  place,  everything  possible,  not  only  march¬ 
ing,  dancing  and  calisthenics,  (which  we  carried  out  on  an  exten¬ 
sive  scale)  but  some  school  work  like  drawing  on  the  black 
board,  counting  beads,  and  even  sweeping  the  floor,  was  done 
in  rythm.  We  taught  all  the  children,  or  nearly  all,  to  sing  and 
some  in  the  higher  grades  became  quite  good  vocalists,  so  that 
they  could  sing  in  public,  even  take  solo  parts  in  a  comic  opera. 
This  was  not  confined  to  the  school  or  chapel,  but  each  division 
sang  in  its  day  room  and  prayers  as  well  as  grace  were  sung  at 
bedtime  and  at  meals. 


Atwentfres  tn  Education 


185 


Most  of  the  instruction  in  singing  was  by  the  regular  teachers 
not  only  in  the  school  proper  but  during  the  teacher’s  evening 
hours  in  the  divisions.  For  the  chapel  music  we  used  “The 
Carol”,  a  collection  of  hymns  of  real  merit  with  music  of  a 
higher  order  than  the  usual  run  of  Gospel  hymns,  in  which 
banality  of  words  and  trashy  music  vie  with  each  other.  I  love 
the  elaborate  and  beautiful  ritual  of  the  Episcopal  church  and 
am  very  fond  of  the  chants  so  we  used  the  Psalter  freely.  Each 
Summer  the  children  and  I  had  a  surprise  for  the  teachers  when 
they  returned  from  their  vacation,  in  one  or  two  new  hymns  and 
chants  we  had  learned  while  they  were  away. 

There  was  one  class  of  little  moron  girls  aged  about  ten  to 
thirteen,  whose  teacher  had  the  art  of  getting  them  to  modulate 
their  voices  and  sing  with  good  taste  and  correctness.  One  of 
her  specialties  was  gesture  songs  in  which  the  music  was  illus¬ 
trated  by  appropriate  movements.  On  one  occasion  I  was  escort¬ 
ing  a  visitor  thru  the  school  and  taking  her  into  Mrs.  Summer- 
belle’s  room  asked  that  the  girls  would  sing,  “The  Splendor 
Falls”.  This  they  did  very  prettily.  The  lady  turned  to  me  and 
said,  “oh,  aren’t  they  homely?”  She  declared  to  her  husband, 
who  told  the  story  at  the  club  as  a  good  joke  on  me,  that  I 
flushed  up  and  said,  “I  think  they  are  very  pretty  little  girls”. 
They  said  that  any  man  who  could  find  beauty  in  feeble-minded 
children  was  well  fitted  for  the  job  I  had. 

This  same  class  of  little  girls  and  I  had  a  standing  competi¬ 
tion  every  Spring,  as  to  whether  they  or  I  would  find  the  first 
crocus.  I  had  planted  a  great  many  crocus  bulbs  on  the  lawn 
and  encouraged  the  children  to  look  for  the  flowers.  One  day  I 
walked  into  the  class  room  where  some  visitors  were  gathered 
and  gravely  said,  “girls,  the  most  important  event  of  the  year 
has  occurred”.  Immediately  there  was  a  clapping  of  hands  and 
joyful  shouts,  “the  first  crocus,  the  first  crocus!”,  which  quite 
mystified  the  visitors,  some  of  whom  were  almost  as  much  in  the 
dark  when  my  explanation  had  been  made;  and  some  evidently 
thought  that  I  was  quite  correctly  placed  in  my  surroundings. 

The  needlework  class  was  popular  and  beginning  with  a 
plain  seam,  went  thru  hemming,  felling,  herring-bone  stitch,  to 
embroidery,  tatting,  crocheting,  knitting  and  pillow  lace  making. 
It  was  interesting  to  see  a  moron  girl  to  whom  the  simplest 


186 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


mathematical  problem  to  be  solved  with  slate  and  pencil,  was 
utterly  impossible;  counting  the  numerous  bobbins  on  her  lace 
pillow,  and  producing  a  design  of  beautiful  accuracy.  At  the 
County  Fair  one  year  we  had  a  display  of  the  children’s  work, 
which  included  three  girls  making  pillow  lace.  This  excited 
great  interest  both  among  the  farmers  and  townsfolk. 

Each  child  who  chose  was  given  a  little  plot  to  cultivate  and 
the  school  gardens  were  something  to  show  visitors.  To  grow 
the  biggest  melon  on  the  grounds,  to  carry  it  to  the  superintend¬ 
ent’s  office  in  triumph,  to  have  him  put  it  on  the  office  mantel 
with  a  card  affixed  which  bore  the  name  and  division  and  age  of 
the  grower,  to  peep  through  the  window  and  see  the  big  fruit 
still  testifying  to  his  skill  and  industry,  was  a  great  thing  for  a 
feeble-minded  boy  to  achieve. 

The  entertainments  and  amusements  which  come  very  close 
to  the  school  work  and  are  chiefly  led  by  the  teachers  are  told 
of  in  another  chapter.  All  these  and  all  the  school  work  were 
directed  toward  happiness  and  happiness  is  the  beginning  of  all 
good  things  for  the  feeble-minded.  We  used  to  reverse  the  old 
adage  and  sav,  “be  happy  and  you  will  be  good”.  It  is  easy  to 
understand  how  with  this  spirit  animating  the  work,  the  idea 
of  punishment  soon  became  obsolete.  Very  rarely  was  it  neces¬ 
sary  to  inflict  some  deprivation.  If,  for  instance,  a  boy  declined 
to  do  some  little  task  assigned  him,  it  was  given  to  another  and 
he  was  not  permitted  to  do  anything.  To  see  your  job  given  to 
a  competitor  and  hear  him  praised  for  good  work  while  you 
stand  idly  by,  was  a  serious  penalty. 

All  work  was  made  a  privilege.  To  be  called  by  the  night- 
watch  an  hour  before  the  rest  in  the  morning,  and  trudge  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  thru  the  snow  that  you  may  milk  the  best  cow 
in  the  herd,  or  any  cow,  especially  when  the  superintendent  tells 
some  visitor  what  a  good  milker  you  are  and  how  he  could  not 
get  along  without  you,  is  a  great  privilege,  and  not  to  be  lightly 
lost.  But  every  wise  teacher  knows  the  value  of  privileges  of 
the  sort,  and  as  we  had  our  pupils  twenty-four  hours  a  day  there 
were  many  opportunities  for  them. 

At  the  end  of  four  years  while  discussing  some  slight  changes 
with  my  principal,  I  said,  “Ed,  we  are  in  a  dreadful  position,  we 
have  realized  all  our  ideals.  What  are  we  going  to  do  next?” 


Adventures  in  Education 


1ST 


Edward  admitted  that  he  felt  just  the  same,  that  something  new 
must  be  found  to  strive  for,  some  new  ideas  to  quicken  us.  We 
had  grasped  all  for  which  we  had  reached  and  aa  man’s  reach 
must  exceed  his  grasp”.  So  I  sent  him  to  visit  some  of  the  lead¬ 
ing  institutions  in  the  country,  Columbus,  O.,  Syracuse,  N.  Y., 
Waverly,  Mass.,  Vineland,  N.  J.,  Elwyn,  Pa.,  and  one  or  two 
more,  to  see  what  they  were  doing  better  than  we.  He  came 
back  with  a  few,  very  few,  good  suggestions.  He  saw  much  work 
that  was  poorer  than  ours.  But  while  he  was  seeing  them  they 
were  seeing  him.  Very  soon  came  a  letter  from  Vineland  offering 
the  young  man  a  better  position  as  to  pay  and  other  conditions, 
than  the  State  of  Indiana  allowed  its  principal  whose  salary 
was  limited  by  statute  to  $>750.00  per  annum.*  Especially  he  was 
offered  a  house  to  live  in,  so  that  he  might  marry  a  charming 
girl  to  whom  he  was  engaged. 

The  offer  was  too  good  to  turn  down  and,  speaking  as  a 
brother-in-law,  rather  than  as  a  chief  to  an  invaluable  assistant, 
I  told  him  he  must  accept.  It  was  like  cutting  off  my  right  arm 
but  it  had  to  be.  The  result  may  be  seen  in  Vineland  and  its 
unrivalled  reputation  today.  The  result  at  Fort  Wayne  was  a 
heavy  additional  burden  on  me  for  I  never  succeeded  in  ade¬ 
quately  replacing  my  first  principal  who  had  made  the  school 
department  equal  to  any  in  the  country  and  superior  to  all  but  a 
few.  But  the  work  so  well  begun  kept  on  and  the  school  main¬ 
tained  its  high  standard;  altho  from  that  time  until  the  end  of 
my  service,  I  had  to  be  in  effect  the  director  of  the  school  as  well 
as  superintendent  of  the  institution. 

*In  those  days  many  of  the  Mid-Western  states  imagined  it  was  econ¬ 
omy  to  pay  low  salaries.  The  salary  of  the  superintendent  at  Fort  Wayne 
was  only  $1500,  until  1901,  when  it  was  increased  to  $2000.  The  salary 
at  Columbus  was  $1200  with  some  extra  pay  as  secretary  of  the  Board  of 
Trustees,  and  another  comparatively  fictional  position,  which  made  it  a 
little  over  $2000. 


Chapter  Three 

ADVENTURES  IN  AMUSEMENT 

There  are  many  maxims  guiding  the  government  of  a  school 
for  the  feeble-minded,  which  have  been  wrought  out  of  experience 
gained  in  many  institutions,  but  the  supreme  one  came  to  us 
from  Vineland — “happiness  comes  first,  all  else  follows’7.  If  you 
make  your  pupils  happy  you  can  do  much  with  them,  failing  in 
that  you  fail  indeed.  So  the  department  that  has  to  do  with 
games  and  amusements  is  just  as  important  and  dignified  as 
those  which  provide  food  or  clothing  and  there  is  a  close  and 
natural  connection  between  it  and  the  school  proper.  No  train¬ 
ing  you  can  give  feeble-minded  children  does  more  for  them  than 
that  they  get  in  learning  to  take  part  in  some  little  play. 

So  the  principal  of  the  school  is  usually  the  entrepreneur  of 
the  playhouse,  and  for  four  years  E.  R.  Johnstone  did  that  work 
well.  Every  Wednesday  night  an  entertainment  in  the  chapel; 
once  a  week  a  dance  for  the  boys  at  which  a  detail  of  the  women 
employees  acted  as  partners;  and  once  a  week  a  dance  for  the 
girls  who  did  not  need  other  partners.  (We  did  not  mingle  the 
sexes.)  Then  special  occasions,  special  events, — Washington’s 
birthday,  a  patriotic  program;  Fourth  of  July,  a  picnic  dinner 
and  supper  on  the  lawn,  races  for  the  girls  and  boys,  jumping  in 
sacks,  potato  races,  a  baseball  match,  fire-crackers  all  day  and 
gorgeous  fireworks  at  night;  Christmas  Day!  Oh,  that’s  very 
special,  that  comes  later. 

No  matter  how  good  the  playground  or  how  attractive  the 
menu  in  the  dining  room,  every  one  likes  a  change  occasionally. 
During  the  Summer  vacation  of  the  school,  the  months  of  July 
and  August,  time  was  hard  to  fill  acceptably.  In  the  summer  of 
1895  we  began  a  camp  in  the  woods.  There  was  a  pretty  valley 
in  the  woodland  on  the  farm  down  which  a  creek  flowed  to  the 
river  which  bounded  the  estate  on  the  west.  Here  there  was 
a  safe  wading  beach  and  a  swimming  hole. 


(188) 


Adventures  in  Amusement 


189 


Two  tents  for  children  each  held  sixteen  cots  and  a  small 
one  held  cots  for  two  attendants.  The  first  group  of  big  boys 
who  went  out  built  a  rustic  dining  pavilion  and  a  rude  shed  for 
a  kitchen.  Here  every  Summer  one  party  of  thirty-two  boys  or 
thirty-two  girls  after  another  each  had  ten  days  at  “Camp 
Mathews”,  as  we  called  it  in  honor  of  our  good  Governor  who 
took  much  interest  in  all  we  did.  Of  course  this  pleasure  had 
to  be  restricted  to  the  upper  grades;  the  high-grade  imbeciles 
as  we  called  them,  (Goddard  had  not  then  invented  the  term 
Moron)  but  we  had  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  of  those  avail¬ 
able.  Most  of  the  attendants  were  pleased  when  their  turn  came 
to  go  out  to  camp  with  their  children  but  a  few  of  them  did  not 
like  “roughing  it”,  did  not  care  enough  for  the  freedom  from 
conventionalities  to  submit  to  the  inconveniences  of  camp  life; 
and  these  were  allowed  to  exchange  duty  with  others  and  remain 
at  home. 

The  children  all  were  delighted  with  the  camp.  To  be  away 
for  a  week  or  two  from  the  whistles  and  the  bells.  To  spend  the 
evenings  sitting  around  a  big  camp  fire  singing  songs.  To  have 
the  rules  of  rising  and  retiring  relaxed,  so  that  you  did  not  have 
to  go  to  bed  at  precisely  the  same  time  every  night,  these  and 
other  little  freedoms  were  very  attractive  to  them. 

The  first  season,  tho  all  the  boys  went  in  swimming  the  girls 

were  restricted  to  the  wading  beach.  One  attendant  who  was 

0 

strong  on  physical  culture,  begged  that  her  girls  be  allowed  to 
swim,  and  rigged  up  their  underwear  for  bathing  costumes.  Of 
course  in  the  country  boys  may  go  in  swimming  in  “the  alto¬ 
gether”  but  that  would  hardly  do  for  girls.  So  in  the  Spring 
of  1896  bathing  suits  were  devised  of  grey  cotton  flannel.  They 
were  being  made  in  the  dress-making  room  and  the  girls  had  not 
been  told  what  they  were,  their  purpose  being  kept  secret  for  a 
joyful  surprise  to  be  sprung  when  the  first  party  of  girls  went 
to  Camp.  I  was  conducting  some  visitors  through  the  industrial 
building  when  one  of  the  ladies  saw  the  suits  and  asked,  “who 
are  the  bathing  suits  for?”  Some  of  the  girls  heard  her,  caught 
on  and  cried  out,  “oh,  bathing  suits  for  us  girls,  we  are  going 
in  swimming  at  camp”.  I  made  them  promise  to  keep  the  secret 
but  before  bed-time  every  girl  in  the  institution  knew  of  the  joy 
in  store. 


190 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


Hardly  second  in  value  to  a  play  as  entertainment  and  first 
in  its  regular  value  to  the  management,  was  the  Sunday  School. 
As  half  the  force  of  employees  were  on  leave  each  Sunday  it  was 
necessary  to  take  the  children  off  the  hands  of  those  who 
remained  on  duty,  to  allow  them  time  for  dinner  and  a  breathing 
spell.  So  Sunday  School  lasted  from  10 :30  until  noon.  I  always 
conducted  that  myself  and  I  owe  the  fluency  of  speech  which  my 
friends  call  eloquence  and  my  adverse  critics  loquacity  to  the  fact 
that  for  ten  years  and  more  I  talked  to  my  feeble-minded  children 
for  twenty  minutes  every  Sunday  morning.  It  is  my  deliberate 
conviction  that  if  you  can  really  hold  a  feeble-minded  audience 
you  can  hold  any  other,  even  the  U.  S.  Senate. 

In  the  course  of  a  few  years  a  very  elaborate  ritual  was 
worked  out,  including  singing,  responsive  reading,  chanting  and 
reciting  psalms,  with  special  songs  and  memory  gems  by  the  dif¬ 
ferent  divisions  with  the  band  to  march  in  by  and  play  the 
voluntary  at  the  close.  In  this  way  the  period  of  an  hour  and  a 
half  was  filled  without  trouble.  All  during  my  term  of  office 
about  one-fourth  of  the  children  were  epileptics.  Now  it  is  a 
well  known  fact  that  while  unpleasant  excitement  will  often 
precipitate  a  seizure  in  an  epileptic,  pleasurable  excitement  does 
not.  In  the  early  days  at  the  school  a  spasm  at  an  entertain¬ 
ment  was  unknown  but  a  spasm  at  Sunday  School  was  frequent. 
But  during  my  last  five  years  after  the  ritual  above-mentioned 
had  reached  its  full  development,  a  spasm  was  as  rare  at  Sunday 
School  as  at  a  play. 

A  popular  entertainment  devised  by  the  principal  and  matron 
was  monthly  birthday  parties  for  the  children  who  were  born  in 
the  month,  one  for  boys  and  one  for  girls.  When  this  was  planned 
we  had  about  six  hundred  and  fifty  children  and  more  than  one 
hundred  of  them  had  never  had  a  birthday  that  was  on  record. 
This  was  convenient  because  we  wanted  to  keep  the  parties  down 
to  a  manageable  size.  So  to  those  who  had  no  known  birthdays 
we  gave  appropriate  ones  spread  thru  the  year. 

Two  boys  named  George  were  given  the  twenty-second  of  Feb¬ 
ruary.  Abraham  got  the  twelfth  of  the  same  month.  Charles 
found  to  his  delight  that  he  shared  a  birthday  with  Charles 
Dickens.  Florence  celebrated  with  Florence  Nightingale.  Claude 
had  the  same  day  as  Governor  Claude  Mathews.  Eliza  was  very 


Adventures  in  Amusement 


191 


proud  because  she  and  the  beloved  matron  owned  the  nineteenth 
of  August,  and  Alexander  was  pleased  that  he  and  the  superin¬ 
tendent  were  born  on  January  the  second.  With  each  of  the 
birthday-less  ones  some  similar  connection  was  made.  It  was 
pleasant  to  be  accosted  by  an  eager  smiling  little  one,  with  the 
remark,  "I’m  going  to  a  birthday  party,  Mrs.  Johnson  has  given 
me  a  birthday”.  The  parties  were  simple  inexpensive  affairs. 
Just  a  little  cake  and  candy  in  addition  to  the  usual  supper,  with 
a  few  special  games  for  the  participants  and  the  fun  of  wearing 
Sunday  clothes  on  a  week-evening.  But  their  value  as  a  coming 
event  of  joy,  was  worth  many  times  their  cost. 

One  of  the  things  unprovided  for  by  the  state  appropriation 
was  Christmas  presents  and  I  had  to  devise  a  plan  to  get  money 
for  them.  A  few  of  the  parents  sent  their  children  Christmas 
boxes,  which  usually  contained  some  present  appropriate  to 
come  from  the  hands  of  Santa  Claus  on  Christmas  morning;  but 
there  were  many  hundreds  more  who  did  not.  Each  winter  a 
special  grand  entertainment  was  given,  to  which  the  public  were 
invited  and  were  permitted  to  pay  for  the  privilege.  These  were 
so  popular  that  the  chapel  was  always  over-crowded.  While 
E.  B.  Johnstone  was  principal  he  planned  and  conducted  these 
events.  When  he  left  there  seemed  no  one  to  take  his  place,  so 
I  made  it  one  of  my  specialties  and  I  developed  the  Christmas 
entertainment  to  a  hither-to  unheard  of  splendor. 

The  work  of  preparation  was  divided  between  the  teachers, 
one  having  charge  of  the  choruses,  one  of  the  boys’  speaking 
parts,  one  of  the  girls’,  etc.  The  teacher  of  sewing,  embroidery 
and  lace-making,  had  charge  of  making  the  costumes  which  with 
the  help  of  my  wife  I  designed.  That  teacher  was  perfect  at 
carrying  out  other’s  plans  but  not  herself  inventive  so  we 
worked  well  together.  After  the  parts  were  learned,  which  was 
a  long  job  since  every  movement,  intonation,  and  gesture  had  to 
be  taught  child  by  child,  I  used  to  conduct  the  rehearsals  and  I 
had  more  fun  than  the  children  and  they  had  plenty ;  bad  behavior 
by  a  child  having  a  part  to  be  punished  by  being  put  out  of  the 
play,  was  rarely  heard  of. 

As  the  plan  worked  out  it  grew  until  the  rule  was  to  spend  a 
few  weeks  of  the  school  time  getting  ready.  This  was  justified 
on  the  theory  of  the  educational  value  of  the  training  and  the 


192 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


large  proportion  of  the  school  children  who  took  part;  and  any¬ 
way  onr  school  term  of  ten  months  was  quite  long  enough.  Then 
about  three  weeks  before  Christmas  so  as  to  have  time  to  spend 
the  receipts  properly,  we  gave  the  play.  We  had  two  full  dress 
rehearsals,  one  on  Monday  for  the  girls  to  see,  one  on  Tuesday 
for  the  boys.  (By  this  time  the  chapel  would  not  hold  all  at 
once.)  On  Wednesday  the  actors  rested  and  on  Thursday  and 
Friday  night  and  Saturday  matinee,  public  performances  were 
given  with  reserved  seats  at  twenty-five  cents  per.  The  house 
seated  529  and  was  always  full  and  usually  a  few  hundred 
tickets  were  sold  more  than  were  used. 

One  of  the  best  of  these  plays  was  a  comic  opera  called,  “The 
Pay  of  the  Pied  Piper”,  founded  on  Browning’s  poem  of  the  old 
legend  of  Hamelin.  This  was  given  in  December  1900.  The 
music  was  simple  yet  attractive  and  catchy.  The  characters 
included  a  troop  of  rats  very  realistically  costumed,  which  the 
children  enjoyed  enacting;  a  group  of  councillors  and  their 
wives,  the  Burgomaster  and  the  Beadle,  a  crowd  of  children  for 
the  street  scene  and  the  Piper. 

Out  of  the  play  of  the  Piper  there  grew  a  myth  or  legend. 
Like  all  good  myths  that  grow,  this  had  a  tiny  seed  of  objective 
reality.  In  devising  the  costume  for  the  Beadle  who  had  an 
important  part ;  as  it  was  a  fourteenth  century  story  I  gave  him 
a  short  purple  cloak  with  a  heraldic  device  on  the  back.  As 
both  heraldic  and  picturesque  this  device  was  a  yellow  lozenge¬ 
shaped  shield  bearing  a  red  griffin  rampant.  This  was  the  seed 
fact  of  the  myth.  Needing  new  scenery  for  the  council  chamber 
this  was  made  in  panels  with  a  replica  of  the  yellow  shield  and 
red  griffin  on  each.  Out  of  that  naturally  grew  the  idea  that 
the  griffin  was  the  heraldic  device  of  the  city.  Then  came  a 
large  shield  and  griffin  to  hang  over  the  Burgomaster’s  chair  in 
the  center  of  the  stage.  Next  in  the  course  of  a  few  days,  for 
the  myth  when  once  the  seed  was  planted  grew  rapidly,  came 
the  fancy  that  this  particular  griffin  had  a  magic  quality,  that 
his  aspect  changed  with  the  prosperity  or  adversity  of  the  city 
looking  serene  when  all  was  well  sorrowful  when  disease  came 
and  fierce  when  war  fare  threatened. 

Then  it  was  necessary  to  get  this  idea  across  the  footlights; 
so  a  lady  of  the  cast  a  wife  of  one  of  the  councillors,  was  given 


Adventures  in  Amusement 


193 


the  line,  “the  Griffin,  our  city’s  protector,  looks  down  with  indig¬ 
nation  upon  a  Burgomaster  and  Council  who  cannot  deliver  us 
from  a  plague  of  rats”.  Then  of  course  the  device  had  to  explain 
itself  and  by  degrees,  in  five  or  six  weeks,  the  myth  grew  to  its 
final  shape.  It  included  a  hitherto  unheard  of  “Prince  Hamel 
the  Second”  who  founded  the  city,  its  name  being  variously 
interpreted  as  Hamel’s  Line  or  Hamel’s  Lin,  from  a  famous  lin  or 
linden  tree  on  the  river  bank,  under  which  the  prince  when  a 
baby  had  been  thrown  out  to  die;  his  father,  Hamel  the  First 
having  been  deceived  by  a  faithless  nurse  as  to  his  legitimacy. 
The  griffin  had  been  the  kindly  guardian  of  the  child,  caring  for 
him  until  when  grown  into  a  fine  youth  he  was  providentially 
restored  to  his  father’s  arms.  The  Prince  adopted  a  griffin  as 
his  heraldic  device  and  the  privilege  of  using  it  was  conferred 
by  him  on  his  city. 

The  myth  was  used  to  advertise  the  play  and  the  day  follow¬ 
ing  its  appearance  in  the  Fort  Wayne  J ournal-Gazette  the  paper 
printed  a  letter  written  by  a  man  from  Brunswick,  saying  that 
while  everyone  knows  the  story  of  the  piper  and  the  rats  is  his¬ 
torical  — if  you  doubt  it  go  to  Hamelin  today  and  see  Pied  Piper 
Street  down  which  the  rats  were  led  to  the  river;  all  this  non¬ 
sense  about  Hamel  and  the  griffin  was  too  silly  to  be  printed. 

A  day  later  came  a  letter  from  the  professor  of  Comparative 
Mythology  of  the  University  of  Weissnichtwo,  commenting  on  the 
story  as  a  beautiful  example  of  the  growth  of  a  myth.  Just  as 
plants  removed  from  their  native  habitat  to  a  more  friendly 
clime  will  blossom  out  with  new  splendor,  so  the  old  myth  trans¬ 
planted  from  the  worn  out  soil  of  Brunswick  to  the  fertile  West 
had  developed  into  this  lovely  legend.  Of  course  an  identical  pen 
wrote  the  story  for  the  paper  and  the  letters  from  the  Bruns- 
wicker  and  the  professor. 

Various  other  publicity  stunts  were  worked  out  of  the  griffin 
myth  and  the  play  was  well  advertised.  Before  the  first  perform¬ 
ance  the  citizens  of  Fort  Wayne  had  been  instructed  to  some 
extent  both  in  mythology  and  heraldry. 

In  the  play  the  Burgomaster  tells  the  Beadle  to  advertise 
for  a  rat  killer,  and  he  replies  in  a  song  which  in  the  original 
begins  “In  the  London  Daily  Telegraph,  I  will  put  a  telling  para¬ 
graph”.  This  was  made,  “In  the  Fort  Wayne  Daily  Sentinel,  I 


194  Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 

will  put  a  telling  article”  The  proprietor  of  the  paper  kindly 
printed  a  special  front  page  with  the  paper’s  name  in  type  large 
enough  to  be  read  by  the  audience  when  the  Beadle  held  it  up 
as  he  sang;  and  also  sent  a  handsome  check  for  the  Christmas 
fund. 

The  “Pay  of  the  Pied  Piper”  after  all  expenses  including  the 
new  scenery  and  elaborate  costumes  had  been  defrayed;  netted 
the  hitherto  unheard  of  profit  of  $350.00  and  the  Christmas  pres¬ 
ents  that  year  were  better  than  ever  before.  But  even  this  splen¬ 
did  sum  was  beaten  a  year  later  when  we  gave  the  comic  opera 
of  “Columbus  in  a  Merry  Key”.  This  was  the  most  sumptuous 
production  of  the  feeble-minded-stage  at  Fort  Wayne  and  per¬ 
haps  anywhere  else.  It  had  119  characters  and  in  the  final 
tableau,  when  they  were  all  on  the  stage  together  and  nine  girls 
in  white  headed  by  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  came  forward  in  a 
cloud  of  white  mosquito  netting  illuminated  by  an  electric  head¬ 
light  from  above  and  the  cloud  vanishing  sang  the  Star  Spangled 
Banner  each  waving  a  silken  flag  as  the  whole  company  joined 
in  the  chorus,  the  effect  was  little  short  of  sublime. 

The  day  after  this  play,  I  received  an  anonymous  note  which 
said ;  “Dear  Sir :  I  bought  two  tickets  for  your  play  at  Siemon’s 
book  store  which  cost  twenty-five  cents  each.  I  have  often  paid 
$1.50  for  a  seat  at  a  much  poorer  performance,  therefore  I  owe 
you  $2.50,  which  please  find  enclosed.”  The  letter  was  signed, 
“A  Traveling  Man”. 

Columbus  netted  us  $450.00  and  we  were  able  to  gratify  some 
long  unsatisfied  desires.  Little  Minnie  Cripe  had  no  hair  on  her 
head.  Every  Christmas  for  four  years  back  her  pathetic  request 
to  Santa  Claus  had  been  for  a  wig.  Now  wigs  cost  real  money 
and  Santa  Claus  was  poor.  But  this  year  he  felt  rich  and  he  said 
to  Mrs.  Santa,  “If  Minnie  asks  for  a  wig  this  year  let’s  get  her 
one”.  Surely  enough  when  the  letter  to  Santa  Claus  came  from 

division  B-2  there  appeared,  “Minnie  Cripe - a  wig”.  So  a 

friendly  hair  store  lady  was  taken  into  confidence  who  had  just 
the  right  wig  in  stock  second  hand  but  made  over  good  as  new, 
which  she  sold  with  no  profit  or  charge  for  making  over  for  only 
four  dollars.  It  was  a  curly  golden-haired  wig  and  matched 
Minnie’s  complexion  exactly. 


Adventures  in  Amusement 


195 


On  Christmas  morning  when  the  “Happy  Christmas  Day”  and 
“Merry  Christmas  Bells”  had  been  sung  and  the  wonderful  and 
never-to-be-outworn  story  of  the  Shepherds  and  the  Angels,  the 
Wise  Men  and  the  Babe  in  the  manger  had  been  told,  came  the 
presents.  The  stage  was  full  of  clothes-baskets  heaped  high.  The 
Christmas  tree  which  nearly  touched  the  high  chapel  ceiling,  was 
illuminated.  So  that  all  the  children,  who  file  out  of  the  chapel 
company  by  company  after  receiving  their  presents  might  see 
the  fun,  Minnie’s  division  was  called  up  the  very  first  and  her 
name  headed  the  list.  She  received  the  box  with  wonder,  not 
dreaming  that  her  four  years’  desire  was  being  gratified.  Then 
Mrs.  Santa  led  her  out  by  a  door  at  the  back  of  the  chapel  to  one 
of  the  employee’s  bed-rooms  and  fitted  the  wig  on  her  head.  When 
the  child  saw  herself  in  the  mirror  she  screamed  with  delight. 
Then  she  was  led  back  to  the  chapel  and  when  the  children  saw 
Minnie’s  happy  face  surmounted  by  golden  curls,  the  din  was 
terrific.  Clapping,  stamping,  whistling,  all  the  noises  that  they 
liked,  because  you  know,  on  Christmas  Day  no  one  might  say 
“Wo”  or  “Dont” ;  unless  indeed  some  child  is  hurting  another. 
Poor  Minnie  faced  the  joyous  tumult  for  two  minutes,  then  burst 
into  tears  and  running  up  to  Santa  Claus  she  threw  her  arms 
about  him  and  hugged  him  tightly,  and  there  were  two  or  three 
other  pairs  of  eyes  not  quite  dry  just  then. 

One  year  the  letter  to  Santa  from  Colonia  contained  a  request 
from  John  Dixon  for  a  cross-cut  saw,  and  he  got  it,  saws  are 
always  useful  on  a  farm.  Then  I  asked  the  head  farmer  why 
John  wanted  the  saw  and  the  explanation  came  that  John  was 
working  in  the  woods  getting  out  firing  for  next  year’s  brick 
burning  and  his  favorite  job  was  sitting  on  one  log  and  pulling 
the  saw  over  another,  and  if  he  owned  the  saw  he  had  a  cinch 
on  that  job.  Another  request  was  from  Duke  Bedford  who  drove 
the  milk  wagon  from  the  Colony  to  the  institution  every  day. 
He  asked  for  a  pair  of  blankets  for  his  team,  a  fine  pair  of  Clydes¬ 
dales  of  which  he  was  very  proud  and  which  he  thought  he 
owned.  If  there  was  a  gayer  pair  of  horse  blankets  in  town  than 
the  pair  Duke  got,  it  was  because  Santa  couldn’t  find  them. 

Of  course  even  the  stupendous  sum  of  $450.00  could  not  buy 
such  costly  presents  for  each  of  the  800  children  who  saw  Colum¬ 
bus,  but  hundreds  of  the  lower  grades,  the  idiots,  could  not 


196 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


appreciate  anything  better  than  ten  cents  would  buy  and  a 
twenty-five  cent  toy  satisfied  hundreds  more;  so  to  the  morons, 
especially  the  big  boys  and  girls  who  did  so  much  good  work, 
the  dressmakers,  tailors,  shoemakers,  assistant-cooks,  waitresses, 
etc.,  we  could  give  their  hearts  desire  which  included  mandolins, 
white  dresses,  sashes  of  satin  ribbon  six  inches  wide  and  two 
yards  long,  violins,  parchesi-sets,  guitars  and  other  valuables. 
One  Christmas  a  pair  of  rubber  boots  was  the  height  of  the  ambi¬ 
tion  of  half  a  score  of  farm  boys.  In  the  course  of  a  few  years 
there  were  enough  mandolins,  guitars  and  violins  to  equip  a 
girl’s  orchestra,  which  made  as  much  music  and  not  nearly  as 
much  noise  as  the  boys’  brass  band.  Many  of  the  attendants  and 
all  the  teachers  enjoyed  taking  part  in  dressing  the  numerous 
dolls  which  were  in  demand.  Every  girl  had  to  have  a  doll  but 
did  not  need  a  new  one  every  year. 

The  selecting,  purchasing  and  labeling  of  the  hundreds  of 
presents  was  a  very  important  job,  especially  the  wrapping  and 
checking  off  for  it  would  be  a  tragedy  if  any  child  were  for¬ 
gotten.  So  my  wife  and  I  made  this  our  special  pleasant  duty 
and  for  weeks  our  evenings  were  spent  in  Santa  Claus  work 
shop,  as  the  room  set  aside  at  this  season  of  the  year  was  called. 
The  choice  of  presents  which  at  first  was  very  difficult  became 
easy  when  the  plan  of  the  letter  to  Santa  Claus  from  each 
division  was  hit  upon,  and  with  the  great  success  of  the  show 
business  the  bugbear  of  expense  vanished.  For  the  few  children 
who  received  boxes  from  home  a  present  from  the  box  was  placed 
in  the  baskets  with  those  which  came  from  Santa  Claus,  and 
the  rest  of  the  box  given  later. 

One  Christmas  a  small  tragedy  was  narrowly  averted.  Little 
Hattie  had  lost  an  eye.  That  year  there  were  three  hundred  and 
seventy  girls  in  the  institution  and  Hattie  was  one  of  one  hun¬ 
dred  and  twenty  who  each  asked  for  a  doll.  Now  between  the 
time  of  wrapping  and  labeling  and  the  present  giving  on  Christ¬ 
mas  morning  some  accident  had  injured  one  doll’s  head  knock¬ 
ing  out  an  eye,  and  by  the  irony  of  Fate  it  was  Hattie’s  doll!! 
As  soon  as  a  child  gets  her  present  the  first  impulse  is  to  pull 
off  part  of  the  wrapping  to  see  what  it  looks  like,  and  poor  little 
one-eyed  Hattie  was  confronted  by  a  one-eyed  doll.  But  before 
she  had  time  to  realize  what  had  happened,  another  pair  of  eyes, 


Adventures  in  Amusement 


197 


made  all  the  sharper  by  the  deep  love  in  the  heart  below  them, 
had  seen  the  accident  and  quickly  Mrs.  Santa  Claus  caught  the 
damaged  doll  out  of  Hattie’s  arms  saying,  “Why  Hattie,  that’s 
not  your  doll,  what  a  funny  mistake”,  and  reaching  over  her 
head  she  pulled  from  the  tree  a  gorgeous  creation  in  yellow  satin 
and  lace  saying,  “This  one  is  yours”.  To  have  had  the  child 
think  that  Santa  Claus  had  played  a  heartless  joke  on  her  would 
have  been  tragic  indeed. 

To  look  back  a  quarter  of  a  century  and  remember  the  joy 
I  was  able  to  give  to  so  many  of  the  poorest  and  feeblest  of  the 
little  ones,  makes  memory  which  often  saddens,  a  great  source 
of  happiness.  I  often  declared  that  on  Christmas  Day  I  had 
more  real  real  fun  than  any  fifteen  men  in  the  state. 

Besides  adding  to  the  joy  of  life,  both  of  the  children  and  my 
own,  I  valued  the  opportunities  which  festivities  of  all  kinds 
afforded  me  of  coming  in  close  touch  with  my  children  so  that  I 
might  the  better  lead  and  control  them.  I  wanted  them  to  rec¬ 
ognize  the  superintendent  not  as  an  austere  and  distant  ruler 
or  judge,  but  as  the  dispenser  of  pleasure  and  happiness.  I  felt 
toward  them  in  a  large  measure  as  I  did  to  my  own  family,  I 
wanted  them  to  feel  towards  me  as  loving  children  do  to  their 
father.  Time  went  on  and  the  numbers  grew  so  great  that  per¬ 
sonal  contact  with  each  was  impossible,  but  I  kept  up  my  close 
relations,  especially  with  the  morons,  the  most  difficult  class  to 
control,  as  much  as  I  possibly  could  to  the  end. 


Chapter  Four 


ADVENTURES  WITH  HELPERS 

One  great  source  of  strength  to  my  administration  was  that, 
with  one  rather  hurtful  exception,  the  law  which  made  it  my 
duty  to  choose  my  staff  was  strictly  observed  by  my  Board.  About 
three  months  after  I  took  charge  Mr.  Hackett,  President  of  the 
trustees  paid  me  a  visit  and  after  a  complete  tour  of  the  insti¬ 
tution  said,  “now,  Mr.  Johnson,  you  have  had  time  to  ascertain 
the  quality  of  your  help.  Remember  if  there  is  a  man  or  woman 
among  them  who  is  not  qualified  by  ability  and  character  for 
the  service,  it  is  your  fault.  It  is  your  job  and  yours  only  to 
hire  and  fire  and  we  (the  trustees)  have  nothing  to  say  about  it. 
We  shall  not  even  advise  you7’.  Only  once  during  my  term  did 
the  trustees  depart  from  that  rule,  when  they  did  at  the  one 
Board  meeting  from  which  I  was  absent,  re-engage  a  physician 
whose  services  were  unsatisfactory. 

In  fact  for  the  first  eight  years  of  my  service,  the  Board  gave 
me  almost  too  much  of  my  own  way  so  that  I  got  a  little  spoiled. 
The  school  was  growing  fast,  both  in  numbers  and  in  popular 
estimation.  My  administration  appeared  to  be  an  unqualified 
success.  As  I  had  a  natural  inclination  to  assume  responsibility, 
whether  that  properly  devolving  on  me  or  not,  they  just  as  natur¬ 
ally  shirked  or  let  me  assume  it.  The  full  bad  results  of  this 
method  did  not  show  for  many  years,  but  all  my  institution  life 
my  responsibilities  weighed  heavily  on  me  and  at  last  broke  me 
down. 

Part  of  the  burden  of  responsibility  is  inevitable.  When  any¬ 
thing  goes  wrong  in  an  institution  it  is  always  the  man  in  charge 
who  is  held  to  account  by  the  public,  never  the  trustees  nor  the 
subordinates  who  may  actually  be  at  fault. 

On  one  occasion,  when  I  was  more  than  usually  burdened 
by  work  and  worry,  I  had  a  visit  from  Ernest  Bicknell,  Secretary 

(198) 


Adventures  With  Helpers 


199 


f 

of  the  Board  of  State  Charities.  He  was  quite  distressed  at  my 
condition — I  was  then  showing  signs  of  a  break-down  which 
came  later— and  reasoned  with  me  about  it.  He  told  me  that 
it  could  not  last,  or  I  could  not,  that  I  would  not  only  become 
a  nervous  wreck  but  that  life  itself  was  in  danger.  I  answered, 
“I  know  it,  but  it  is  inevitable,  a  job  like  this  to  a  sensitive, 
conscientious  man,  is  fatal  in  ten  or  twelve  years.  Think  what 
happened  to  Doran  at  Columbus,  to  Kerlin  at  Elwyn  and  others. 
It’s  the  price  of  the  job  and  I  must  pay  it.” 

Bicknell  said  it  was  all  wrong,  there  must  be  a  way  out.  I 
answered,  “I  know  it’s  wrong  but  I  cannot  see  the  way  out,  I 
must  just  go  on  till  the  break  comes.”  Of  course  this  was  foolish. 
If  I  had  been  wiser,  or  even  a  little  thicker  skinned,  it  would 
have  been  different.  When  the  break  did  come,  when  grip 
supervened  on  over  work  and  worry,  and  I  had  to  spend  some 
weeks  in  bed  and  more  recuperating,  the  institution  survived  my 
absence  from  the  helm.  But  do  my  best  the  sense  of  responsi¬ 
bility  was  always  a  heavy  burden,  and  it  really  was  well  for  me 
when  I  was  compelled  to  resign.  I  am  today  strong  and  vig¬ 
orous  able  to  do  as  much  mental  work  as  ever  and  more  physical 
toil  than  most  men  of  my  age.  Had  I  remained  at  Fort  Wayne 
ten  years  before  this  time  I  would  have  been  sleeping  beside  my 
child  and  my  dear  wife  at  Crown  Hill. 

The  Matron  and  the  Home 

There  is  a  usual,  and  usually  wise,  institution  method  when¬ 
ever  there  are  girl  inmates  or  many  women  employees,  of  choos¬ 
ing  the  wife  of  the  superintendent  if  she  is  at  all  capable  to  be 
matron.  This  is  so  generally  accepted  as  good  institution  policy 
that  it  escapes  the  charge  of  nepotism.  There  are  institution 
matters  which  can  be  more  freely  discussed  between  husband 
and  wife  than  between  unrelated  officials  of  opposite  sexes.  This 
is  less  true  today  than  it  was  thirty  years  ago.  One  of  the 
wholesome  changes  in  social  life  which  I  have  witnessed  during 
my  long  experience,  has  been  in  the  increasing  degree  of  frank¬ 
ness  about  sex  matters  possible  between  people  of  refinement 
of  opposite  sexes.  This  may  have  had  some  regrettable  results, 
but  it  has  lessened  sex  obsession  to  a  marked  degree  and  its 
benefits  far  out  weigh  its  possible  evils.  Every  wholesome  minded 


200 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


person  must  rejoice  that  the  conspiracy  of  silence  on  sex  affairs 
has  gone,  or  is  fast  going. 

When  I  took  charge  at  Fort  Wayne  the  matron,  left  over 
from  the  former  regime,  was  one  who  appeared  highly  competent. 
During  the  investigation  which  followed  my  predecessor’s  down¬ 
fall  she  had  been  somewhat  unjustly  aspersed.  Governor 
Mathews  and  I  both  believed  the  slurs  upon  her  were  unjust 
and  the  Governor  asked  me  to  retain  her  at  least  for  a  time.  He 
said,  “as  gentlemen,  we  owe  this  lady  such  amends  as  we  can 
make  for  the  unjust  suspicions  aroused,  and  if  you  can  keep  her 
for  a  year  or  even  a  few  months,  that  will  do  it.”  So  as  Mrs. 
Johnson  could  not  be  matron  at  that  time,  altho  later  she  held 
the  position  well,  she  was  made  Assistant  Superintendent — at  a 
nominal  salary  and  her  influence  on  the  girls  and  the  women 
employees  was  salutary.  The  social  and  moral  atmosphere  of 
the  institution  soon  began  to  alter,  and  the  change  was  in  the 
direction  of  homelikeness.  This  had  begun  from  the  first  but 
became  more  rapid  and  positive  after  the  investigation  in  Feb¬ 
ruary  1895  to  be  told  of  in  another  chapter,  and  Mrs.  Johnson 
had  become  matron  in  name  and  authority  as  well  as  in  effect. 

We  had  a  gratifying  compliment  from  Hastings  H.  Hart  on 
the  occasion  of  his  visit  to  the  School.  He  had  long  been  secre¬ 
tary  of  the  Minnesota  State  Board  of  Charities  and  knew  the 
institutions  of  that  state  intimately  and  he  had  visited  hundreds 
of  others.  He  declared  that  he  had  never  found  nearly  as  much 
homelikeness  before  in  anything  like  so  large  an  institution. 

The  Democratic  Spirit 

The  employees  of  a  school  for  the  feeble-minded  are  of  various  r 
grades  and  they  tend  to  a  hurtful  separation  into  castes.  I  was 
a  Democrat,  not  only  in  politics,  but  in  sympathies,  and  hated 
class  distinctions.  But  more  important  than  my  dislike  was 
the  injury  to  the  administration  thru  jealousy  or  envy,  which 
class  distinctions  were  likely  to  cause  and  were  causing. 

In  attempting  to  bring  about  a  wholesome  unity  between 
employees  I  had  one  strong  factor  on  my  side;  the  rank  of  a 
common  laborer,  either  male  or  female,  was  not  included  in  the 
personnel  of  the  School  and  has  no  place  in  such  an  institution. 
All  employees  are  teachers,  trainers,  foremen,  forewomen.  The 


Adventures  With  Helpers 


201 


laborers  are  the  children.  The  two  classes  between  which  fric¬ 
tion  was  most  likely  to  be  harmful  were  the  teachers  and  the 
attendants.  The  former  felt  themselves  to  be  a  superior  class. 
Their  pay  was  better,  their  hours  of  work  much  shorter,  they 
lived  in  the  front  center  with  the  highest  officers.  They  had 
their  special  dining  room.  Their  work  required  no  sacrifice  of 
personal  dignity.  No  child  who  could  not  attend  to  his  personal 
wants  might  go  to  school. 

The  attendants  must  necessarily  live  with  the  children  and 
minister  to  their  bodily  needs.  Their  hours  were  long;  some 
of  their  duties  disagreeable,  they  felt  that  the  teachers  had  a 
“soft  snap”  and  they  envied  them.  The  industrial  workers,  engi¬ 
neers,  carpenters,  painters,  tailors,  dressmakers,  shoemakers, 
head  gardeners,  etc.,  altho  they  ate  with  the  attendants  and 
lodged  in  the  rear  center,  held  a  sort  of  median  place.  All  three 
classes  had  to  do  with  the  children  and  it  was  of  great  impor¬ 
tance  that  the  training  in  order  and  good  behavior  given  in  the 
classes,  should  not  be  offset  in  the  day-rooms,  dormitories,  din¬ 
ing  rooms,  and  workshops. 

Institution  employees  must  have  their  “time  off”  for  health 
as  well  as  comfort.  When  I  took  charge  the  teachers  had  no 
evening  duties,  except  at  occasional  entertainments,  and  no 
duties  on  Saturday.  About  one-third  of  them  were  on  duty  for 
a  few  hours  each  Sunday.  The  industrial  employees  had  Satur¬ 
day  afternoon  and  all  day  Sunday  off  duty.  The  attendants 
were  on  duty  daily  from  early  morning  until  the  children’s  bed¬ 
time  and  were  allowed  one  Sunday  off  in  three,  and  that  only 
from  10:30  A.  M.  until  the  children’s  bedtime.  This  appeared 
grossly  unfair.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  the  relations  between 
teachers  and  attendants  were  likely  to  be  strained  and  blame 
for  something  happening  to  a  child  be  passed  back  and  forth 
from  one  to  the  other. 

In  the  hope  of  diminishing  class  feeling,  weekly  “family* 
dances”  in  the  school  hall,  were  arranged,  to  which  every  em¬ 
ployee  was  invited.  This  had  a  slight  beneficial  effect  but  the 
classes  kept  rather  to  themselves  and  a  lady  teacher  would 
sometimes  refuse  to  dance  with  a  male  attendant. 

♦The  staff  and  employees  are  often  spoken  of  as  “the  family”  as  opposed 
to  “the  children”. 


202 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


After  waiting  long  enough  to  assure  myself  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  and  to  gain  the  cordial  loyalty  of  most  of  the  people,  I 
resolved  on  some  radical  changes.  The  first  one  announced  was 
that  thereafter  all  attendants  and  industrial  employees  would 
have  each  alternate  Sunday  on  and  off  duty.  On  the  Sundays 
they  were  on  duty  the  industrial  people  were  required  to  share 
with  the  attendants  in  the  care  of  the  children,  and  the  attend¬ 
ants’  time  off  was  to  be  from  Sunday  morning  until  Monday 
morning. 

Then  all  the  teachers  were  required  to  be  on  duty  alternate 
Sundays,  they  were  still  and  always  allowed  all  Saturday,  but 
they  were  required  to  spend  certain  evening  hours  with  the  chil¬ 
dren  between  supper  and  bedtime,  a  period  which  is  the  most 
difficult  to  fill  acceptably  especially  in  bad  weather. 

About  this  time  a  lucky  incident  helped  the  new  deal.  Two 
sisters  had  been  employed  as  teachers.  One  had  resigned  and 
later  re-applied.  There  being  no  vacancy  on  the  teaching  staff 
she  was  offered  a  position  as  attendant,  and  thenceforth  the 
sisters  were  together  in  the  institution  one  as  teacher  and  the 
other  as  attendant.  They  could  hardly  treat  each  other  as  of 
different  castes  and  trifling  as  this  was  it  had  a  good  effect. 

Other  events  tended  in  the  same  direction.  A  young  woman 
who  began  as  an  attendant  was  promoted  to  teaching  and 
eventually  became  principal.  Another  attendant  was  made  dress¬ 
maker,  in  which  place  she  showed  such  fine  influence  on  the  older 
girls  that  she  became  one  of  the  most  successful  teachers  of  that 
difficult  class  the  adolescent  female  moron.  Her  bosom  friend 
was  an  attendant  who  was  later  made  the  house  mother  of  a 
cottage  for  adult  females. 

My  plan  was  successful  especially  as  the  personnel  changed. 
The  new  people  naturally  accepted  what  they  found,  not  having 
former  easier  experiences  to  contrast  with  it.  The  caste  spirit 
disappeared  tho  slowly;  the  general  tone  of  the  place  was  grad¬ 
ually  raised.  I  did  my  best  to  set  a  good  example  of  democracy 
and  encouraged  my  own  boys  and  girls  to  join  in  the  family 
dances.  I  told  my  people  that  we  had  room  in  the  service  only 
for  ladies  and  gentlemen  and  any  others  who  got  in  would  soon 
be  gotten  out.  The  chief  benefits  of  the  more  democratic  rela¬ 
tions  were  to  the  children. 


Adventures  With  Helpers 


203 


But  the  task  of  choosing  and  directing  so  many  people  is 
always  a  superintendent’s  most  difficult  and  anxious  one,  and  I 
often  congratulated  myself  that  during  my  term  of  more  than 
ten  years  it  was  never  further  complicated  by  political  influence. 
I  never  had  an  employee  whom  I  would  have  hesitated  to  dis¬ 
charge,  if  incompetent,  because  of  politics. 

During  my  service  I  was  compelled  to  discharge  a  few 
employees  for  cause  and  when  such  a  case  arose  I  did  not  ask 
for  nor  allow  a  resignation.  Of  course  I  had  some  real  resigna¬ 
tions;  some  of  them  were  because  of  ill  health  or  marriage,  or 
family  trouble  requiring  the  presence  of  the  official  at  home. 
Some  of  them  were,  frankly,  because  the  employees  preferred 
other  service;  these  were  usually  of  people  who  had  been  but  a 
short  time  with  us ;  the  attachment  to  the  institution  and  to  the 
feeble-minded  children  which  often  arose  was  very  pleasant  to 
see ;  it  was  most  marked  among  the  very  best  class  of  employees. 
But  when  a  serious  fault  such  as  drunkenness,  immorality, 
cruelty  to  a  child  or  other  grave  institution  crime  was  committed, 
the  offender  was  dismissed  summarily.  To  allow  such  a  one  to 
resign  thus  implying  that  he  left  at  his  own  choice  always 
seemed  to  me  to  be  dishonest;  and  incidentally  it  is  very  poor 
policy  for  the  superintendent  who  is  always  in  danger  of  attack 
by  political  or  other  enemies.  The  testimony  of  an  attendant 
who  has  been  summarily  discharged  for  cause  is  usually  dis¬ 
credited  by  that  fact,  but  such  is  not  the  case  with  one  who 
resigns. 

Institution  Method  and  Spirit 

In  taking  charge  of  a  great  institution  with  a  large  force  of 
employees,  I  appreciated  the  value  of  loyalty  as  an  essential 
quality  of  institution  life.  But  I  did  not  at  first  realize  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  more  than  loyalty  to  the  state  and  to  the  school.  After 
a  few  months  I  became  convinced  that  personal  loyalty  to  myself 
as  superintendent  was  even  more  essential,  that  I  must  deserve 
it  and  win  it  if  I  were  to  manage  successfully.  “Loyalty”  is 
often  misused  and  its  meaning  distorted.  It  is  a  matter  of  spirit 
not  of  letter  and  does  not  imply  blind  unthinking  obedience.  To 
obey  an  order  which  seems  ill-advised  or  mistaken,  perhaps  even 
injurious,  in  stupid  routine  fashion  is  the  very  opposite  of  loyalty. 


204 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


Occasionally  at  some  moment  of  emergency,  immediate,  unques¬ 
tioning  obedience  may  be  necessary,  as  for  instance,  during  a 
fire  or  when  some  other  disaster  impends ;  but  such  moments  are 
rare. 

True  loyalty  does  not  preclude  question  nor  even  constructive 
criticism.  I  told  my  subordinates  that  if  they  received  an  order 
which  seemed  to  them  ill-advised,  one  of  four  things  had  hap¬ 
pened; — either  the  order  had  been  transmitted  incorrectly: — 
or  they  did  not  understand  it: — or  they  were  mistaken  in  their 
estimate  of  it: — or  because  of  lack  of  information  or  error  of 
judgment  the  order  was  really  ill-advised  or  mistaken.  In  any 
such  case  a  faithful  subordinate  will  believe  that  his  chiefs 
intentions  are  good,  and  will  ask  for  an  explanation.  The  chief 
who  does  not  give  such  explanations  willingly  and  cheerfully 
is  not  fit  for  authority.  Such  a  one  may  secure  obedience,  but  he 
will  never  receive,  nor  will  he  deserve,  the  loyal  support  of  his 
subordinates. 

One  of  the  theories  with  which  I  began  was  that  responsi¬ 
bility  implies  authority ;  as  I  was  responsible  for  the  acts  of  my 
employees  I  must  have  full  control  over  them.  That  led  to  a 
belief  that  a  sort  of  benevolent  autocracy  is  the  best  form  of 
government  for  an  institution.  Of  recent  years  I  have  seen 
reason  to  modify  this  theory  and  I  know  by  the  remarkable 
example  of  Vineland,  that  an  intelligent,  sympathetic  and 
friendly  democracy  if  it  can  be  established,  is  better  than  the 
most  benevolent  absolutism.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  spirit 
of  the  one  in  charge  must  not  permeate  and  animate  the  whole 
organization.  It  is  as  true  as  when  Carlyle  said  it,  that  "every 
good  institution  is  the  lengthened  shadow  of  one  man.”  But  it 
does  mean  the  spirit  of  co-operation,  the  devotion  of  all  to  a 
common  purpose,  so  that  the  giving  of  orders  is  merely  formulat¬ 
ing,  making  definite  and  arranging  who  shall  do  what  every  one 
wishes  to  have  done. 

There’s  a  homely  truth  in  the  sailor’s  adage  that  a  new  cap¬ 
tain  should  have  a  new  crew.  But  I  had  a  large  staff  and  should 
I  have  wished  to  do  so,  could  not  replace  them  wholesale.  To 
take  on  a  new  wholly  inexperienced  staff  would  have  been  sui¬ 
cidal.  There  were  many  details  of  the  institution  that  at  first  I 
could  not  know,  and  so  could  not  give  orders  about.  I  had  to  bide 


Adventures  With  Helpers 


205 


my  time  and  often  worry  about  things  I  saw  were  wrong  but  did 
not  know  how  to  right. 

When  one’s  staff  is  numerous  it  is  difficult  to  keep  in  close 
personal  relation  with  each  one.  Many  orders  must  be  trans¬ 
mitted  thru  department  heads.  On  the  one  hand  a  chief  must 
support  the  authority  of  his  staff  officers;  on  the  other  every 
subordinate  must  feel  free  to  come  to  his  chief  if  he  has  any 
ground  for  complaint.  I  tried  various  schemes  to  make  it  easy 
for  subordinates  to  come  to  me  for  explanations  or  even  with 
complaints,  but  I  confess  it  was  hard  to  gain  their  full  confidence 
so  that  they  would  do  this  freely. 

One  plan  that  worked  well  was  that  of  employee’s  meetings. 
At  these  they  received  general  instructions  about  their  duties 
and  were  encouraged  to  make  suggestions  for  improved  methods, 
whether  for  their  own  convenience  or  for  the  benefit  of  the  chil¬ 
dren,  or  of  the  state,  and  every  suggestion  of  merit  was  promptly 
adopted.  In  asking  for  suggestions  I  had  a  favorite  story  of 
meeting  a  girl  between  the  kitchen  and  dining  room  where  the 
door  opened  awkwardly,  the  collision  involving  spilling  a  bowl 
of  soup  and  the  indignant  remark  from  the  girl,  “that  door 
ought  to  open  the  other  way,”  to  which  I  replied  “Mary,  it  ought 
to  and  it  shall,”  and  sent  at  once  for  the  carpenter  to  make  the 
change.  I  told  them  that  if  I  would  act  on  a  suggestion  from  a 
feeble-minded  girl  I  would  surely  welcome  one  from  a  strong 
minded  employee.  In  this  and  other  ways  I  did  my  best  to  secure 
not  mere  obedience,  but  hearty  co-operation,  which  is  as  much 
more  valuable  as  it  is  more  difficult  to  obtain. 

My  first  matron  often  boasted  of  her  loyalty  and  would  declare 
that  if  the  superintendent  ordered  her  to  transfer  the  contents 
of  the  attic  to  the  cellar  and  of  the  cellar  to  the  attic,  she  would 
do  it  and  ask  no  questions.  But  her  loyalty  was  all  of  the  letter. 
On  more  than  one  occasion  she  transmitted  orders  to  attendants 
the  reason  for  which  she  did  not  understand  and,  on  her  theory 
of  loyalty,  could  not  ask.  Some  of  these  caused  what  seemed 
unnecessary  inconveniences ;  and  then  when  the  attendants 
grumbled  she  blamed  the  inconveniences  on  me  saying  the  super¬ 
intendent’s  orders  must  be  obeyed  without  questioning.  This 
roused  natural  and  excusable  resentment  against  what  they 
thought  my  dictatorial  methods. 


206 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


This  matron  had  had  training  in  penal  institutions;  she  was 
a  strict  disciplinarian  but  her  influence  in  some  ways  was  bad 
on  the  women  employees.  Her  mental  and  spiritual  attitude 
to  the  girls  being  what  she  had  carried  over  from  a  prison;  was 
quite  inappropriate  for  our  school.  My  predecessor  as  super¬ 
intendent  had  been  a  chaplain  of  a  rather  old  fashioned  reform 
school,  all  his  training  for  institution  affairs  had  been  gained 
there  and  the  matron  having  had  similar  training  the  govern¬ 
ment  was  too  much  one  of  repression.  Corporal  punishment 
was  the  usual  thing  for  many  offenses.  Runaways  had  been 
frequent,  especially  among  a  group  of  larger  boys  who  had  been 
transferred  as  feeble-minded  from  a  reform  school.  The  general 
spirit  of  the  administration  was  wrong.  I  had  had  little  experi¬ 
ence  to  guide  me  and  I  confess  that  the  gravamen  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  only  dawned  on  me  gradually. 

I  was  wise  enough  to  go  slowly.  Changes  must  be  well  con¬ 
sidered  for  it  is  as  hurtful  to  institution  loyalty  to  re-install 
some  method  once  discarded,  as  it  is  to  re-employ  some  subor¬ 
dinate  who  has  been  discharged  for  cause.  Better  endure  a 
faulty  system  for  months,  than  try  an  experiment  which  fails 
and  be  obliged  to  go  back  to  the  plan  it  supplanted. 

We  soon  got  rid  of  corporal  punishment,  unless  for  excep¬ 
tional  offenders  or  very  grave  offenses,  and  then  altogether.  One 
of  the  evil  methods  I  found  concerned  runaways,  (or  as  we  called 
them,  “elopements” — I  strictly  forbade  the  word  “escape”.) 
This  had  been  introduced  by  the  former  superintendent  out  of 
his  reform  school  experience.  Fortunately  these  were  exclusively 
of  boys.  The  practice  had  been  when  a  boy  was  missing  from 
the  grounds,  to  ring  an  alarm  bell  and  send  every  available 
employee  in  vehicles  or  on  bicycles  to  scour  the  neighboring  roads 
and  lanes,  and  when  the  runaway  was  not  quickly  found  to  send 
circular  letters  to  the  near-by  chiefs  of  police  and  county  sher¬ 
iffs  describing  the  missing  one  and  offering  a  reward  for  his 
return;  then  when  he  was  brought  back  inflicting  some  condign 
punishment.  This  method  was  absurdly  wrong.  The  excite¬ 
ment  was  bad  for  the  morale  of  all  and  the  truant  enjoyed  the 
adventure  which  made  him  of  so  much  importance.  Such  a 
method  might  be  necessary  when  a  runaway  was  from  a  penal 
institution.  It  was  ridiculously  out  of  place  in  a  school  whose 


Adventures  With  Helpers 


207 


pupils  were  voluntarily  admitted  and  could  be  withdrawn.  Inci¬ 
dentally  it  was  very  bad  publicity. 

After  a  third  or  fourth  elopement  subsequent  to  my  taking 
charge  I  resolved  that  the  procedure  was  so  foolish  that  it  must 
be  changed  at  any  hazard.  One  morning  the  boys’  supervisor 
came  to  the  office  in  great  excitement  saying  that  Harry  Black 
had  run  away  again.  He  started  for  the  bell  rope  but  halted 
when  I  said  quietly,  “Mr.  Knott,  don’t  ring  that  bell.”  “But”, 
he  said  “what  must  we  do,  aren’t  we  going  to  catch  him?”  I 
replied  “no,  he  is  not  a  boy  who  will  do  any  harm  and  he  will 
come  back  soon  or  some  one  will  bring  him.  There  is  going  to 
be  no  more  of  this  foolish  excitement  about  a  straying  boy.” 
And  sure  enough  about  six  o’clock  Harry  came  back,  very  hun¬ 
gry,  dirty  and  much  disappointed.  He  had  been  hiding  close 
to  the  road  in  the  woods  about  a  mile  north,  waiting  to  hear 
the  alarm  bell  and  to  see  the  men  in  buggies  and  on  bikes  rushing 
out  in  search  of  him.  The  new  plan  worked  and  elopements  lost 
their  adventurous  charm. 

One  Saturday  morning  a  boy  from  the  third  division  came  to 
the  office  to  report  that  “Bobby  Jackson  is  going  to  run  away 
tonight.”  Bobby  was  a  high-grade  imbecile  of  about  fifteen  with 
the  curse  of  the  wandering  foot.  He  had  run  away  from  home, 
from  an  orphan  asylum,  from  the  reform  school  and  once  from 
the  institution.  I  thanked  the  informant  and  gave  him  a  stick 
of  candy.  Candy  has  a  large  function  in  a  school  for  feeble¬ 
minded. 

Bobby’s  parents  lived  only  about  three  miles  away,  on  a  little 
farm  on  the  road  which  passes  the  institution  gates.  After 
waiting  an  hour  or  two,  so  that  he  would  not  connect  the  call 
with  the  boy  who  told,  he  was  sent  for  and  asked  how  long  it 
had  been  since  he  had  seen  his  folks.  He  did  not  remember  but 
his  card  record  showed  that  it  had  been  nearly  two  years.  He 
was  told  it  was  too  bad  not  to  have  seen  his  mother  for  so  long 
and  I  said,  “now,  Bobby  tomorrow  (Sunday)  morning  put  on 
your  Sunday  suit  before  breakfast  instead  of  after,  the  gardener 
shall  give  you  a  bunch  of  carnations  from  the  green  house  to 
take  to  your  mother  and  you  can  spend  the  day  at  home.”  Bobby 
was  dazed ;  he  was  planning  to  elope  in  his  old  clothes  that  night 
and  was  told  to  go  the  next  day  in  his  best  attire.  In  the  morning 


208 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


he  got  his  carnations  his  last  inquiry  being  “when  must  I  come 
back?”  He  was  told  when  he  was  ready  for  supper  or  in  time 
for  bed.  As  he  started  he  said,  “Fm  coming  back,”  and  I  said, 
“of  course  you  are,  I  know  that.”  He  reported  at  the  office  at 
about  five  o’clock  that  I  might  know  he  had  kept  his  word.  A 
few  months  later  Bobby  was  transferred  to  Colonia  where  he 
became  a  member  of  the  brick  yard  gang,  from  which  privileged 
position  no  boy  would  be  so  foolish  as  to  elope. 

Early  one  morning  word  came  that  four  high-grade  boys 
were  planning  their  getaway.  I  went  to  the  dining  room  at 
breakfast  and  made  the  assembled  boys  a  speech.  I  told  them  I 
understood  four  of  our  company  had  planned  to  leave  us  that  I 
hoped  they  would  be  happy  and  find  jobs  as  good  as  they  had 
here  but  that  it  was  sometimes  difficult  to  find  the  job  you  like, 
that  outside  people  have  to  work  hard  for  poor  pay  and  often 
got  food  not  so  good  as  we  were  accustomed  to.  My  only  request 
to  them  was  that  they  would  call  at  my  office  to  say  good-bye, 
when  I  would  have  the  cook  put  up  a  nice  lunch  for  them  and 
give  them  each  a  little  money  so  that  they  might  not  go  broke 
among  strangers.  The  other  boys  saw  the  humor  of  the  situa¬ 
tion  and  laughed  the  would-be  travelers  out  of  the  adventure. 

One  boy  who  had  slipped  away  for  a  few  days  and  returned 
very  tired  and  hungry,  was  over-heard  dissuading  a  comrade 
who  contemplated  a  similar  adventure  saying,  “you  better  not, 
Charlie,  I  tell  you  the  world  is  a  cold  place  for  us  boys.”  After 
my  second  year  elopements  no  longer  annoyed.  Only  one  big 
fellow  ran  off  and  stayed  away  and  he  was  doubtfully  feeble¬ 
minded  enough  to  be  a  proper  inmate  of  the  institution. 

This  method  applied  to  morons  and  high-grade  imbeciles 
who  were  the  most  likely  to  stray.  The  low-grade  idiots  might 
wander  off  as  animals  would  leave  their  pasture  when  the  gate 
was  open,  but  any  conscious  effort  to  escape  was  beyond  them 
and  they  were  always  in  some  one’s  care.  We  had  a  very  few 
boys  of  low  mentality  and  desperately  bad  instincts  with  a  crav¬ 
ing  for  liberty  and  cunning  enough  to  make  them  a  constant 
source  of  anxiety.  These  were  always  a  danger  since  if  they 
got  away  they  were  likely  to  do  serious  harm.  When  these 
escaped,  which  fortunately  was  very  seldom,  we  made  the  most 
prompt  and  strenuous  effort  to  return  them.  Our  duty  was 


1 


Adventures  With  Helpers 


209 


even  more  to  protect  the  community,  especially  the  children  and 
property  of  our  near  neighbors,  than  to  promote  the  welfare  of 
the  feeble-minded.  But  the  very  dangerous  ones  were  so  excep¬ 
tional  and  so  few  as  not  seriously  to  affect  the  general  plan. 

The  real  way  to  retain  the  children  is  to  make  their  life  full 
of  interest,  and  especially  to  arrange  that  there  shall  always 
be  an  event  of  joy  in  the  near  future.  No  one  would  run  away 
just  before  Christmas,  nor  the  Glorious  Fourth,  nor  Washing¬ 
ton’s  birthday,  nor  his  own  birthday  party,  nor  before  an  enter¬ 
tainment  in  which  he  had  a  part  to  play.  Then  after  a  few  post¬ 
ponements,  the  habit  of  staying  gets  stronger  and  stronger. 
Adolescence  is  the  period  of  adventure  for  defectives  as  for  nor¬ 
mals  and  as  that  wanes,  and  it  wanes  early  in  the  feeble-minded, 
the  urge  of  change  dies  out  and  is  quite  forgotten. 


Chapter  Five 

THE  ADVENTURE  OF  THE  COLONY 

The  institution  was  located  just  outside  of  Fort  Wayne,  on 
a  fifty-five  acre  tract  of  sand  hills.  When  I  took  it  over  it  had 
nothing  worth  calling  a  farm.  An  extensive  apple  orchard  had 
been  set  out  on  land  ill  adapted  for  that  fruit  and  was  practically 
worthless.  The  grounds  had  been  poorly  cared  for,  the  exterior 
was  bare  and  unattractive.  My  predecessor  as  superintendent 
had  no  taste  for  landscape  gardening  and  defective  vision  kept 
him  from  noticing  the  poor  work  of  the  men  he  employed. 

Under  these  conditions  it  did  not  take  more  than  ordinary 
ability  and  exertion  to  make  things  look  better  and  after  a  few 
years  systematic  work,  the  front  was  covered  with  vines,  trees 
were  planted  and  cared  for,  flower  beds  bloomed  and  the  general 
appearance  was  greatly  changed. 

After  my  first  year  a  farm  two  miles  north  was  rented  and 
the  beginning  of  a  farm  colony  was  made.  Then  a  better  farm 
was  chosen  which  was  very  suitable  for  a  colony.  It  was  held  at 
a  fair  price;  an  option  was  secured,  and  the  legislature  of  1895 
was  asked  for  an  appropriation.  There  was  a  tract  of  twenty 
acres  in  front  of  the  institution  which  a  member  of  my  Board 
was  determined  to  buy.  This  was  held  at  a  high  figure  and  was 
wholly  unsuitable  for  farming,  being  neither  large  enough  nor 
the  right  kind  of  land.  When  the  appropriation  bill  was  in  the 
Committee  of  the  House,  I  told  one  of  the  members  who  was  one 
of  my  enthusiastic  supporters,  of  the  danger  of  the  money  being 
wasted  by  the  injudicious  purchase  of  a  small  high-priced  tract 
and  got  him  to  insert  a  clause  in  the  act  limiting  the  price  per 
acre  which  might  be  paid,  so  that  the  Board  could  buy  the  land 
I  wanted  and  could  not  buy  the  other.  This  clause  escaped  the 
notice  of  my  Board  member  until  the  bill  was  passed  and  the 
Legislature  had  adjourned.  He  was  very  angry  but  altho  he 


(210) 


The  Adventure  of  the  Colony 


211 


might  have  been  suspicious  he  never  accused  me  of  what  he 
called,  “someone’s  dirty  trick.” 

The  new  farm  which  we  called  Colonia,  was  profitable  to  the 
state  and  a  great  boon  to  me.  I  sorely  needed  a  hobby  to  take 
my  mind  off  its  overload  of  responsibility  and  in  planning  the 
buildings  and  the  crops  and  the  development  of  the  herd  of 
Holsteins,  I  spent  many  pleasant  hours. 

The  breeding  of  the  herd  was  of  absorbing  interest.  The 
heredity  of  cattle  tho  not  so  serious  a  matter  as  that  of  human 
beings  especially  feeble-minded  ones,  has  many  more  satisfac¬ 
tions,  because  one  may  eliminate  the  culls  and  so  control  results. 
Because  of  lack  of  money  I  began  with  a  few  scrub  cows  picked 
up  among  my  neighbor  farmers,  but  Purdue  University  sold 
us  a  highly-bred  bull  at  a  nominal  price;  three  pure  bred  cows 
were  purchased  at  sales  where  bargain  prices  prevailed  and 
the  herd  improved  rapidly.  When  I  resigned  nine  years  later, 
I  left  a  fine  herd  of  high  grades  with  many  pure  bred  cattle  all 
of  which  had  cost  the  state  very  little. 

A  few  months  after  we  begun  dairying  the  farm  supplied  the 
school  with  abundant  milk  and  a  year  or  two  later  with  all  the 
hog  products  needed  except  an  occasional  tierce  of  lard ;  and  no 
one  had  better  hams  and  bacon  than  those  cured  at  Colonia.  I 
had  a  good  saddle  pony  and  a  ride  out  to  Colonia  before  break¬ 
fast  made  a  cheerful  beginning  of  many  a  day’s  hard  work  and 
every  Saturday  morning  I  spent  at  the  farm.  I  kept  the  herd 
book  and  milk  record  myself  partly  because  the  head  farmer  was 
no  book-keeper  but  chiefly  because  I  enjoyed  doing  it.  My  best 
assistant  was  a  moron  boy  who  was  devoted  to  me  and  to  the 
cattle.  He  knew  their  breeding  and  could  always  tell  the  name 
of  the  dam  of  any  calf.  His  memory  was  so  accurate  that  more 
than  once  he  corrected  an  error  I  had  made  in  my  record  of  the 
date  at  which  a  cow  was  due  to  freshen. 

Every  one  who  has  tried  it  seriously  knows  that  a  farm  offers 
the  best  opportunity  for  the  employment  of  feeble-minded  labor. 
When  we  began  the  dairy  I  resolved  that  the  morons  and  high 
grade  imbeciles  should  be  taught  to  do  the  milking.  Fernald  of 
Waverly,  warned  me  that  this  was  impracticable,  he  said  the 
boys  would  dry  up  the  cows  that  it  was  impossible  to  make  a 
feeble-minded  boy  milk  a  cow  clean  that  I  should  be  compelled 


212 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


to  use  hired  help  for  the  milking.  But  that  would  have  upset  my 
plans. 

I  selected  for  overseer  of  the  boys  on  the  farm  a  competent 
attendant  who  had  been  highly  successful  with  a  division  of  older 
morons.  He  was  farm  bred  had  worked  on  a  large  dairy  farm 
and  was  an  expert  milker  so  he  knew  both  the  boys  and  the 
cows  and  managed  them  equally  well.  We  weighed  and  recorded 
the  milk  from  each  cow  at  each  milking  and  this  gave  us  a  con¬ 
stant  check  on  whether  they  were  milked  clean  or  not,  and  the 
close  personal  attention  I  gave  to  the  dairy  secured  the  regu¬ 
larity  of  the  record.  This  was  further  checked  by  weighing  in 
the  total  amount  when  it  was  received  at  the  cold  storage 
each  morning,  the  figures  being  reported  to  me  daily. 

All  the  heifer  calves  and  the  pure  bred  bulls,  were  given 
names  and  numbers  as  soon  as  dropped.  The  grade  bull  calves 
were  disposed  of  at  once.  A  few  years  later  we  were  able  to 
supply  some  of  the  other  state  institutions  with  well-bred  bulls 
to  head  their  dairy  herds.  The  others  were  kept  for  service  or 
sold  to  neighboring  dairy  farmers  anxious  to  improve  their  stock. 

Every  year  at  the  County  Fair  the  Colonia  herd  was  well 
represented,  and  the  boys  who  went  to  care  for  our  exhibits  were 
gratified  by  bringing  home  prizes  we  had  won.  Several  blue 
ribbons  decorated  my  little  office  at  the  farm|  If  the  prize  was 
in  cash  it  was  always  used  for  some  treat  for  the  dairy  hands. 

We  early  adopted  the  practice  of  weaning  the  calves  from 
birth.  Some  of  the  boys  got  quite  expert  as  dry  nurses  for  the 
little  animals  and  became  very  fond  of  them  and  the  calves  recip¬ 
rocated.  It  was  pleasant  to  see  two  or  three  calves  following 
a  boy  round  the  barn  yard.  A  fondness  for  animal  pets  is  a 
frequent  trait  among  feeble-minded  boys  and  girls,  and  it  was 
easy  to  teach  the  boys  to  be  kind  to  the  animals  and  the  dumb 
creatures  responded. 

By  taking  the  calves  away  from  their  mothers  and  transfer¬ 
ring  the  natural  affection  of  the  cow  from  her  offspring  to  the 
boy  who  was  to  do  the  milking,  the  most  friendly  relations  were 
established.  Loud  shouting,  cursing,  beating  or  kicking  cows, 
never  occurred  at  Colonia  dairy. 

One  day  three  boys  strayed  from  the  farm  and  asked  a 
farmer  a  few  miles  away  for  work.  As  he  was  badly  driven 


The  Adventure  of  the  Colont 


213 


at  the  time  he  gave  them  something  to  do,  but  presently  came 
to  the  institution  to  report  that  he  had  the  runaways.  On  being 
asked  how  he  knew  they  belonged  to  us  as  they  were  dressed  like 
common  laborers  and  were  able  to  work,  he  said  that  one  of 
them  refused  a  chew  of  tobacco;  one  had  reproved  his  son  for 
striking  and  shouting  at  a  cow;  and  another  had  hit  his  thumb 
with  a  hammer  and  did  not  swear ;  so  he  knew  they  must  be  from 
the  feeble-minded  school.  He  said  if  they  had  only  worked  as 
well  as  they  behaved  he  would  have  liked  to  keep  them,  but  he  did 
not  know  as  we  did  how  to  get  work  out  of  them.  When  they 
came  home  the  next  day  they  were  complimlented  on  their  good 
behavior  and  the  fine  reputation  they  had  made  for  the  insti¬ 
tution. 

The  story  of  one  of  our  best  farm  boys  and  his  brother  is  an 
excellent  illustration  of  the  right  way  and  wrong  way  of  dealing 
with  the  feeble-minded.  Jesse  and  Jerry  White  lived  in  a  village 
in  Southeastern  Indiana.  With  an  imbecile  mother  and  a 
drunken  father  they  grew  up  under  as  unfavorable  conditions 
as  could  be  imagined.  When  Jesse  was  fifteen  and  Jerry  ten, 
they  were  caught  in  some  offense  and  hailed  before  the  court. 
Jesse  was  sentenced  to  the  Reform  School,  whence  in  due  time 
he  graduated  to  the  State  Prison.  When  as  Secretary  of  the 
Board  of  State  Charities  I  made  his  acquaintance  there  he  was 
serving  his  third  short  term.  He  was  feeble-minded,  but  no  one 
saw  it,  no  one  cared  if  they  did.  He  was  always  in  trouble, 
never  could  do  his  task,  was  frequently  punished,  whenever  a 
legislative  investigation  was  made  Jesse  was  there  with  a  tale 
of  woe.  As  soon  as  one  prison  term  ended  he  commited  another 
offense.  He  spent  much  more  of  his  life  in  prison  than  out  of  it. 
Finally  he  died  of  tuberculosis  in  the  prison  hospital. 

Jerry  was  just  as  feeble-minded  as  Jesse  but  had  better  luck. 
Instead  of  the  reform  school  he  was  sent  to  an  orphan’s  home. 
There  an  intelligent  matron  recognized  his  mental  defectiveness 
and  he  came  to  the  School  for  feeble-minded.  All  attempts  at 
ordinary  education  failed  with  Jerry,  but  he  learned  to  work 
and  soon  became  one  of  the  most  useful  boys  in  the  house.  When 
Colonia  began  he  was  among  the  first  colonists.  He  loved  ani¬ 
mals,  learned  to  drive  and  to  care  for  a  team.  While  reading 
and  writing  were  far  above  his  mental  caliber,  he  soon  could 


214 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


harrow  and  plow  and  even  use  the  one-horse  cultivator  in  the 
corn  field.  He  was  faithful,  cheerful,  happy,  contented  and  use¬ 
ful.  He  became  very  much  attached  to  one  of  my  sons  who  often 
spent  his  holidays  working  in  the  woods  or  the  fields  with  the 
boys.  One  day  Jerry  said  to  me,  “as  long  as  you  and  Johnny 
Johnson  stay  here  Fm  going  to  stay  too,  but  when  you  and 
Johnny  Johnson  quit,  Fm  going  to  quit.” 

One  day  Jerry  was  harrowing  a  field  when  his  team  became 
frightened  and  ran  away  dragging  the  harrow  and  Jerry  who 
clung  to  the  lines,  half  way  across  the  field.  Jerry  got  them 
subdued  but  in  the  struggle  broke  one  of  the  bones  in  his  hand. 
This  was  about  ten  o’clock  in  the  morning.  His  hand  hurt  and 
began  to  swell  up,  but  he  went  on  harrowing.  At  noon  he 
drove  his  team  to  the  barn,  watered  and  fed  them  and  got  his 
own  dinner.  When  the  bell  rang  at  one  o’clock,  he  hitched  up 
and  went  back  to  the  field.  At  four  o’clock  he  reported  to  the 
head  farmer  “Mr.  Reichelderfer,  I’ve  got  that  field  done  har¬ 
rowed  and  I  broke  my  hand.” 

He  was  hustled  down  to  the  “big  house”  to  the  doctor  and  as 
the  buggy  came  past  the  office  I  asked  him  what  was  the  mat¬ 
ter.  When  he  showed  his  hand  swollen  to  three  times  its  natural 
size  and  told  me  the  story,  I  said,  “oh,  Jerry,  you  foolish  boy, 
why  didn’t  you  quit  as  soon  as  you  hurt  yourself?”  He  replied, 
“Mr.  J ohnson  I  wanted  to  get  that  field  done  harrowed.” 

Jesse  and  Jerry  were  equally  feeble-minded.  If  Jesse  had 
had  as  good  a  chance  as  Jerry  he  might  have  been  equally  happy, 
equally  useful.  One  was  treated  with  dull,  official,  stupid 
routine,  and  the  other  with  reasonable  common  sense  and  kind¬ 
ness.  To  Jerry  the  state  was  a  kind  mother,  to  Jesse  she  was  a 
cruel  or  indifferent  step-mother. 

The  farm  work  offered  many  opportunities  for  festivals.  The 
end  of  a  harvest  of  any  kind  when  a  little  extra  exertion  had 
been  necessary  was  marked  in  some  joyous  way,  some  treat  like 
ice  cream  or  lemonade  and  cake  for  those  who  participated;  a 
half  holiday  with  a  trip  to  the  city  at  the  end  of  silo  filling  or 
the  hay  harvest ;  a  day’s  nutting  in  the  woods  with  a  picnic  sup¬ 
per  when  the  potatoes  were  all  gathered  in.  The  value  of  the 
“event  of  joy  in  the  near  future”  was  never  disregarded. 


The  Adventure  of  the  Colony 


215 


Lumbering  at  Colonia 

One  of  the  attractions  of  the  Breckenridge  farm  was  the 
presence  of  a  good  deal  of  standing  timber  which  might  be  util¬ 
ized  for  the  numerous  buildings  which  a  dairy  farm  requires  in 
our  cold  Northern  winters.  Before  the  brick  making  began  this 
seemed  the  best  material  for  the  purpose.  A  traveling  saw-mill 
outfit  was  rented  during  each  of  two  winters  and  nearly  200,000 
feet  of  timber  was  cut  and  sawed.  This  cost  only  $4.00  per  thou¬ 
sand  feet,  the  rough  work  done  by  the  boys  and  being  in  the 
winter  teams  were  available  for  hauling  without  expense. 

The  school  had  as  head  carpenter  a  man  of  great  skill  and 
ingenuity  and  the  buildings  he  constructed  were  models.  A  big 
octagon  barn  with  a  fine  stone  basement  for  the  cows,  was  quite 
a  landmark  in  the  neighborhood.  After  its  completion  a  friendly 
contractor  was  asked  for  an  estimate  of  its  value ;  and  the  actual 
cost  which  was  closely  computed  showed  a  saving  of  about 
$3,000.00.  Wagon  sheds,  calf  houses  and  other  necessary  build¬ 
ings  soon  made  a  complete  and  handsome  plant.  Later  after  the 
brick  making  began,  a  slaughter  house,  milk  house  and  some 
sheds  were  built  of  brick.  The  state  by  this  time  owned  no  other 
farm  plant  of  equal  value  altho  the  total  cost  was  less  than  any 
other. 

One  of  the  first  buildings  was  a  circular  silo  which  was  the 
first  silo  owned  by  the  state  and  the  first  circular  silo  in  North¬ 
eastern  Indiana.  All  this  work  was  done  without  any  special 
appropriations,  this  leading  to  the  closest  economy  for  only 
buildings  that  were  actually  needed  were  put  up.  This  some¬ 
times  resulted  in  accepting  make-shifts  afterwards  to  be  dis¬ 
carded,  but  it  had  many  compensating  advantages. 

Fruit  Growing  as  an  Industry 

The  farm  was  well  adapted  to  fruit  growing  but  its  old 
orchard  which  had  been  a  good  one,  was  decaying.  Many  hun¬ 
dreds  of  trees  were  set  out,  chiefly  apples  and  peaches  but  a 
variety  of  others  were  used.  The  planting  was  well  done,  our 
proportion  of  failures  being  below  five  per  cent.  After  a  few 
years  the  promise  was  good.  My  hope  was  to  develop  fruit  grow¬ 
ing  as  a  basic  industry  and  add  canning,  drying  and  preserving; 


216 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


the  product  after  supplying  the  institution  to  be  sold  to  the 
other  schools  and  hospitals  owned  by  the  state,  few  of  which 
were  so  favorably  situated.  I  had  resolved  never  to  invade  the 
ordinary  avenues  of  commerce.  There  was  market  enough  in  the 
institutions  in  the  capital  city  alone  for  a  large  output.  I  did 
not  remain  long  enough  to  begin  this  plan  much  less  to  carry  it 
out.  The  only  thing  done  in  the  way  of  supplying  other  institu¬ 
tions,  except  the  bulls  mentioned  above,  was  that  for  each  of 
several  years  I  was  able  to  send  a  few  barrels  of  sauer  kraut  to 
the  Hospital  for  Insane  at  Easthaven,  where  “feeble  minded 
kraut”  became  quite  popular  with  the  employees. 

A  few  years  after  I  had  left  the  School,  about  the  time  the 
new  apple  orchard  I  had  planted  came  into  bearing,  Purdue 
University  began  an  annual  Apple  Show  with  the  purpose  of 
encouraging  fruit  growing  in  the  state  and  advertising  the  value 
of  the  soil  and  climate  of  Indiana  for  apple  growing.  The 
Colonia  orchard  competed  and  for  two  succeeding  years  won  the 
best  prizes.  Two  large  silver  cups  now  adorn  the  trustees  Board 
room.  After  the  second  year  the  managers  of  the  show  ruled  out 
all  the  state  institutions  from  the  competition. 

The  first  season  that  the  peaches  should  have  borne  a  full 
crop,  three  frosts  on  the  nights  of  the  5th,  6th,  and  7th  of  May, 
destroyed  every  one.  Before  the  next  season  my  service  had 
terminated.  One  of  the  mortifications  of  my  life  occurred  when 
it  was  reported  to  me  that  the  Colonia  peach  orchard  had  borne 
a  wonderful  crop,  but  that  hundreds  of  bushels  had  been  allowed 
to  rot  under  the  trees.  Success  in  so  many  and  varied  enter¬ 
prises  needs  a  persistent  driving  energy  on  the  part  of  the  super¬ 
intendent  which  only  the  exceptional  man  possesses. 

Feeble-Minded  Brickmakers 

The  hope  of  finding  or  inventing  some  permanent  and  profit¬ 
able  industries  for  the  trained  imbeciles  and  morons  was  always 
present  in  my  mind.  My  theory  of  the  possibility  of  their  com¬ 
plete  care  depended  on  doing  this.  I  wanted  to  graduate  them 
to  the  colony  as  soon  as  they  were  ready  and  then  keep  them 
there,  useful,  happy  and  innocent,  as  long  as  they  lived. 

After  the  farm  was  well  established  there  came  a  chance  to 
add  at  a  very  low  price  a  forty  acre  tract  that  cornered  into  the 


The  Adventure  of  the  Colony 


217 


first  purchase.  An  option  was  secured  and  later  a  legislative 
appropriation  of  $2,000.00.  I  had  plans  for  a  permanent  pasture 
and  an  extensive  apple  orchard,  Northern  Indiana  is  one  of  the 
best  apple  growing  districts  in  the  world.  Quite  by  accident  I 
discovered  that  the  land  held  a  deposit  of  excellent  brick-clay 
and  here  seemed  a  golden  opportunity  for  profitable  employment 
of  some  imbecile  boys. 

The  first  step  was  to  make  sure  of  the  quality  of  the  clay.  An 
old  friend,  Mr.  Leonard  of  Fort  Wayne,  who  had  been  making 
brick  all  his  life  was  induced  to  visit  the  tract  and  examine  the 
clay.  His  verdict  was  that  it  was  the  best  he  had  ever  seen, 
being  free  from  the  small  limestone  pebbles  which  spoil  so  many 
bricks.  He  declared  that  had  he  known  of  this  bed  of  clay  so 
near  to  the  city,  he  would  have  been  glad  to  buy  it  at  double  the 
amount  it  had  cost  the  state  as  his  own  clay  land  was  exhausted 
and  he  was  about  retiring  from  business. 

We  bought  a  second  hand  plant  at  a  nominal  price;  when 
installed  ready  for  work  it  had  cost  less  than  $200.00.  With  a 
hired  foreman  and  a  force  of  ten  morons  and  imbeciles,  the  work 
began  in  May  1897  and  went  on  until  the  autumnal  frosts.  Our 
lumbering  operations  had  left  a  supply  of  firewood  that  needed 
little  but  hauling.  The  first  season  we  made  350,000  bricks  of 
fair  merchantable  quality  which  cost  the  state  $1.10  per  thou¬ 
sand,  the  estimate  including  every  expense  but  the  boys’  labor; 
the  profit  paying  the  cost  of  the  plant  several  times  over. 

The  first  bricks  we  made  were  used  at  the  institution  for  some 
minor  building,  for  flooring  the  extensive  cellars,  for  sidewalks 
around  the  houses,  and  for  the  floor  of  a  vegetable  preparing 
room.  I  had  learned  from  Patten  of  the  Southern  prison,  a 
method  of  making  a  cheap  floor  by  laying  bricks  on  a  good  foun¬ 
dation  and  then  slushing  the  surface  with  a  thin  cement.  While 
not  so  smooth  as  a  trowelled  cement  pavement  this  can  be  flushed 
and  is  equally  sanitary. 

The  next  season  the  work  began  as  early  as  the  weather  would 
allow  and  half  a  million  bricks  were  made.  These  cost  a  little 
more  than  those  of  the  previous  year  as  we  had  to  buy  some 
firing,  but  the  cost  was  less  than  $2.50  per  thousand,  the  market 
price  was  then  about  $6.50,  so  that  the  net  profit  was  about  the 
same  as  the  first  year. 


218 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


During  subsequent  winters  we  got  our  firewood  for  the  brick 
yard  by  buying  by  the  acre  the  tops  left  after  lumbering  opera¬ 
tions  by  our  neighbors  within  eight  or  ten  miles.  The  boys 
would  drive  to  the  place  early  in  the  morning,  spend  the  day 
chopping  and  sawing,  make  a  fire  and  enjoy  a  picnic  dinner  in 
the  woods.  They  were  all  well  clad,  with  “felts”  and  “overs”  to 
keep  their  feet  warm  in  the  snow.  We  managed  to  keep  the  cost 
of  our  firing  below  two  dollars  a  full  cord,  and  it  was  splendid 
winter  work  for  the  brick  yard  gang  and  greatly  enjoyed  by  them. 

Visions  of  extensive  improvements  began  to  dawn  on  my 
mind.  With  abundant  bricks  at  so  cheap  a  price,  with  labor 
available  for  excavating,  hauling  and  all  rough  work,  it  seemed 
that  the  development  of  the  institution  was  assured  so  far  as 
buildings  go. 

When  I  went  before  the  legislative  committee  I  showed  them 
samples  of  the  bricks  I  had  made  and  a  card-board  model  % 
inch  to  the  foot  of  the  cottage  I  next  wanted  to  build.  I  got  their 
hearty  approval  and  they  gave  me  the  modest  appropriations  I 
asked.  It  was  the  way  of  development  and  I  did  it  year  after 
year  until  in  1901  an  economical  Governor  forbade  the  method, 
which  he  imagined  led  the  Ways  and  Means  Committee  into 
extravagance. 

The  third  year  I  induced  the  Board  to  buy  a  modern  soft-mud 
plant,  with  a  20  H.  P.  gasoline  engine  and  the  Mock  system  of 
carriers  and  dry  sheds;  the  whole  equipment  costing  about 
$5,000.00.  A  permanent  kiln  was  built  and  thereafter  for  five 
years  the  yearly  tale  of  brick  was  one  million.  It  would  have 
been  easy  to  sell  the  output  at  a  handsome  profit.  I  had  been 
offered  $6.50  per  thonsand  in  the  spring  for  all  on  hand  the  pur¬ 
chaser  to  do  the  hauling;  but  I  hoped  to  get  appropriations  for 
several  buildings  and  more  over  I  did  not  wish  to  incur  the  ani¬ 
mosity  of  the  labor  unions,  which  so  far  were  on  my  side. 

When  the  new  law  allowed  the  commitment  of  adult  females 
it  was  necessary  to  build  a  cottage  for  them.  By  this  time  I  had 
learned  a  good  deal  about  the  trade  of  brick-making  and  I  deter¬ 
mined  that  the  bricks  for  the  new  cottage  should  be  the  best  and 
handsomest  soft-mud  bricks  ever  seen  in  Indiana.  Now  the  color 
of  bricks  depends  mainly  on  the  sand  used  in  the  moulds  and  a 
car  load  of  special  sand  was  secnred.  But  important  factors  are 


The  Adventure  op  the  Colony  219 

the  burning  and  the  cooling.  When  the  kiln  designed  for  the  new 
cottage  was  nearly  burned,  I  went  to  the  brick  yard  one  Satur¬ 
day  afternoon  and  found  the  kiln  closed  the  burning  was  sup¬ 
posed  to  be  done*  The  foreman  had  been  watching  the  fires  day 
and  night  and  was  asleep.  I  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  kiln  and 
was  not  satisfied  with  the  “settle”.  (We  tell  when  the  bricks 
are  burned  enough  by  the  amount  of  settling,  as  the  bricks  shrink 
in  burning.)  I  told  the  assistant  to  open  the  kiln  mouths  and 
continue  firing  until  I  ordered  him  to  stop. 

The  firing  was  kept  up  until  Tuesday  morning,  when  another 
inspection  showed  a  perfect  settle.  Then  the  foreman  was 
ordered  to  close  the  kiln  and  not  to  open  it  till  it  became  per¬ 
fectly  cool,  which  took  three  weeks.  An  earlier  opening,  by 
admitting  cold  air  on  hot  bricks,  would  cause  some  to  crack  and 
discolor.  The  result  was  a  kiln  of  350,000  with  an  almost 
unheard  of  proportion  of  “line  brick”  i.  e.,  fit  for  the  face  of  the 
wall ;  and  of  the  most  beautiful  color.  The  only  fault  ever  found 
with  them  was  by  the  masons,  who  grumbled  because  they  could 
not  cut  them  with  their  trowels,  but  had  to  use  the  hammers. 

The  evening  following  the  closing  of  the  kiln  the  brick  yard 
gang  had  their  usual  treat.  Hot  coffee  and  doughnuts,  weiner- 
wurst,  potatoes  baked  in  the  ashes  in  front  of  the  kiln  doors 
followed  by  songs  and  recitations  was  the  regular  program.  It 
was  a  sort  of  “Harvest  Home”  for  the  brick  yard,  a  celebration  of 
Colonia’s  most  profitable  and  most  certain  crop. 

While  the  cottage  was  building  for  which  these  fine  bricks 
the  best  ones  we  ever  turned  out  were  made,  a  business  man 
driving  past  saw  what  he  thought  were  costly  pressed  bricks 
being  used  and  reproached  a  member  of  the  Board  for  extrava¬ 
gance  and  would  not  believe  the  bricks  were  made  by  feeble¬ 
minded  boys  until  he  was  taken  to  the  brick  yard  and  shown 
them  at  work. 

Feeble-Minded  Laborers  and  the  Labor  Unions 

When  Labor  day  of  1894  was  approaching,  I  was  waited  on 
by  a  delegation  of  union  officials  who  begged  that  the  Institution 
band  might  march  with  and  play  for  the  Parade.  I  asked  them 
if  they  had  engaged  all  the  Union  bands.  On  being  assured  of 
the  fact  I  consented  to  join  the  march.  Then  they  asked  how 


220 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


much  I  should  charge  for  the  boys’  services,  I  answered,  “not 
one  cent,  but  you  may  give  them  their  lunch,  and  pay  the  leader 
$5.00  for  his  work”.  To  this  they  gladly  assented  and  the  feeble¬ 
minded  band  in  their  handsome  uniforms  led  the  Parade.  I  also 
sent  as  many  of  the  male  employees  as  could  be  spared  and  as 
cared  to  go,  altho  of  course  they  were  not  unionized. 

Thereafter  I  made  a  point  of  employing  strictly  union  labor 
about  the  institution  so  far  as  it  was  available.  I  found  it  the 
most  trustworthy  and  satisfactory  that  could  be  had. 

The  friendly  relations  thus  begun  were  kept  up.  The  boys 
were  allowed  to  work  as  laborers  side  by  side  with  union  men 
whenever  building  which  was  not  under  contract  was  going  on 
and  that  meant  all  our  smaller  jobs.  Union  bricklayers  even 
accepted  our  boys’  services  as  tenders,  never  asking  to  see  their 
union  cards. 

During  the  legislative  session  of  1899,  I  was  present  for  a  few 
days  in  the  interest  of  the  appropriations.  A  certain  amount 
of  lobbying  was  then  considered  proper  for  each  institution  head. 
When  Governor  Durbin  came  in  in  1901  this  was  sternly  for¬ 
bidden  by  him  and  the  institutions  frequently  suffered  in  conse¬ 
quence.  The  president  of  the  United  Labor  Trades  of  Fort 
Wayne  was  there  looking  after  some  labor  bills  and  I,  knowing 
the  man  for  a  good  citizen,  was  able  to  be  of  service  to  him  by 
introducing  him  to  some  of  the  senators  and  representatives 
many  of  whom  I  knew  quite  well. 

About  the  time  to  begin  operations  in  the  following  Spring 
these  friendly  relations  were  well  established.  But  I  was  plan¬ 
ning  to  use  my  boys’  labor  on  an  extensive  scale  and  there  was 
danger  of  union  brick-layers  not  only  refusing  to  work  with  them, 
but  even  that  they  might  decline  to  lay  bricks  made  by  non-union 
labor.  I  invited  my  friend  the  Labor  President  to  visit  the  school 
and  took  him  all  over  the  plant,  showing  him  the  work  the  boys 
and  girls  were  doing  and  explaining  my  plans  for  utilizing  imbe¬ 
cile  labor,  in  all  of  which  he  showed  deep  interest.  Then  after 
giving  him  a  good  dinner  I  drove  him  out  to  the  brick  yard.  The 
story  of  its  rise  and  progress  made  a  great  impression  on  him. 

Then  back  at  the  office  over  a  good  cigar,  I  laid  my  plans 
before  him.  I  told  him,  that  the  facts  of  making  our  own  bricks 
and  of  the  available  labor  capacity  of  the  boys,  were  strong 


The  Adventure  of  the  Colony 


221 


arguments  with  the  legislature  in  securing  appropriations  for 
buildings  whose  cost  to  the  state  could  be  so  largely  reduced. 
Then  I  said  “the  success  of  all  this  depends  on  your  labor  men. 
You  know  I  have  never  employed  non-union  men  if  I  could  help 
it.  If  you  will  get  your  union  brick-layers  to  agree  to  use  the 
bricks  my  boys  make  and  let  them  help  with  the  work,  I  can  get 
appropriations  to  do  a  lot  of  building  and  employ  your  members 
at  good  wages.  But  if  your  union  men  turn  me  down,  a  great 
deal  of  work,  not  only  for  masons,  but  carpenters,  plumbers  and 
others,  that  they  might  otherwise  have  had,  will  be  impossible.” 
With  homely  fervor  he  replied,  “Mr.  Johnson,  we  are  with  you 
till  hell  freezes  over”.  And  he  kept  his  word.  When  other  people 
were  having  all  kinds  of  labor  trouble  the  feeble-minded  boys 
were  working  along  with  union  men  without  friction  or  any 
trouble  (except  that  the  men  would  give  the  boys  chewing 
tobacco)  and  most  of  the  union  workmen  really  seemed  to  take 
pride  in  doing  a  good  job  for  the  state. 


Chapter  Six 


ADVENTURES  IN  CONSTRUCTION 

A  live  institution  is  a  growing  one  and  growth  at  Fort  Wayne, 
when  it  began  was  rapid.  While  nobody  knew  how  many  feeble¬ 
minded  children  there  were  in  the  state  it  was  evident  that  the 
number  was  much  greater  than  the  school  had  room  for,  and 
there  was  always  a  long  waiting  list.  So  the  urge  to  extend  our 
accommodations  was  always  present. 

Unfortunately  the  trustees  when  planning  the  institution, 
had  followed  the  pattern  set  by  the  school  at  Columbus,  O.,  which 
was  a  large,  three-story  and  basement,  congregate  building  with 
two  wings  and  the  administration  part  connecting  them.  This 
had  been  the  typical  institution  plan  when  the  Ohio  school  was 
built.  It  is  one  which  appeals  to  anfbitious  architects  and  to 
trustees  who  love  to  see  their  names  chiselled  on  the  front  pillars 
of  a  pretentious  edifice.  The  instinct  to  build  themselves  monu¬ 
ments  is  very  frequent  in  people  who  have  the  spending  of  public 
funds ;  and  there  are  always  enterprising  citizens  who  want  show 
places  in  and  near  their  city.  The  money  which  has  been  wasted 
in  architectural  display  on  ostentatious  institution  buildings, 
would  provide  accommodation  for  many  of  the  unfortunates  who 
are  debarred  admission  to  the  institutions  because  there  is  no 
room  for  them. 

As  the  Ohio  school  was  famous  it  was  copied  in  many  states 
besides  Indiana.  But  in  the  intervening  years  since  that  school 
was  built,  the  cottage  plan  of  simple  construction ;  first  designed 
for  orphan  asylums  and  then  adapted  for  all  kinds  of  institutions, 
had  been  invented;  and  its  many  advantages  gave  it  the  lead 
with  pregressive  Boards.  And  the  Indiana  trustees  were  all  the 
more  blameworthy  when  they  allowed  a  routine  architect  to  build 
them  a  somewhat  inadequate  specimen  of  an  obsolescent  type, 
that  they  were  actually  occupying  a  partly  finished  plant  on  the 
cottage  plan,  at  Richmond,  which  had  been  designed  for  the 

(222) 


Adventures  in  Construction 


223 


insane  by  Dr.  Joseph  G.  Rogers,  one  of  the  great  constructive 
institution  men  of  the  country. 

However  it  ill  becomes  me  to  blame  the  Board  for  what  it  did 
for  a  few  years  later  when  I  was  planning  Colonia  I  made  a 
similar  grave  error. 

Sunset  Cottage 

The  first  extensive  building  operation  when  the  brick  yard 
supplied  material,  was  a  cottage  for  low-grade  imbecile  and 
idiot  girls.  This  had  a  choice  location  on  a  hill  north  of  the 
main  buildings  and  was  well  designed  and  very  cheaply,  almost 
too  cheaply,  constructed.  It  would  have  been  wiser  to  spend  a 
little  more  on  outside  appearance,  even  had  the  capacity  been 
restricted  to  come  within  the  meager  appropriation.  However 
as  it  was  in  the  rear  of  the  plant  and  chiefly  visible  from  the  road 
some  distance  away,  this  was  not  a  serious  fault.  The  most 
important  part  of  the  house,  the  inside,  was  satisfactory. 

The  cottage  got  its  name  from  the  fact  that  it  faced  the  West 
and  commanded  a  beautiful  view,  especially  in  the  evening  as 
the  sun  went  down. 

There  is  no  better  method  of  employing  the  elder  children 
than  to  use  them  in  caring  for  the  younger  and  feebler  of  their 
kind  and  twelve  girls  who  had  lived  from  two  to  six  years  as 
inmates,  were  installed  at  Sunset  as  “aids”.  The  womjan  in 
charge  of  the  cottage  being  called  the  House  Mother,  these  girls 
were  given  the  title  of  “Sunset  Sisters”.  That  may  seem  a  senti¬ 
mental  name  for  moron  girls,  but  no  one  who  has  seen  the  sisterly 
way  in  which  the  better  ones  among  them  minister  to  one  who  is 
afflicted,  for  instance  to  an  epileptic  in  a  spasm,  to  a  paralytic 
in  the  bath  tub,  or  to  a  helpless  idiot,  who  must  be  fed  at  the 
table,  will  think  it  unfitting.  Everything  that  could  be  devised 
to  make  the  position  attractive  was  done.  To  become  a  Sister 
was  a  valued  promotion. 

There  were  other  inmate  workers  in  the  cottage  besides  the 
Sisters,  but  they  slept  in  the  dormitories  with  the  idiot  children. 
The  Sisters  were  treated  as  much  as  possible  like  employees. 
They  were  to  all  intents  assistant  attendants.  They  slept  in  small 
rooms  with  two  cots  in  each.  Two  girls  shared  a  dresser,  each 
having  her  own  drawers.  They  were  encouraged  to  make  their 


224 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


rooms  gay  with  flowers  and  pictures.  At  Christmas  time  the 
letter  to  Santa  Claus  from  the  Sisters  was  always  answered  in 
full.  It  was  a  happy  and  useful  relationship. 

But  it  was  not  only  the  morons  who  were  useful  aids,  many 
of  the  imbeciles  even  of  pretty  low  grade,  were  trained  in  house¬ 
work  and  were  proud  of  the  work  they  did  and  eager  for  a  word 
of  appreciation  and  praise. 

Pearl,  an  imbecile  of  three  years  mental  age  but  a  big  strong 
girl,  had  in  her  charge  a  wash  room  in  the  basement.  Whenever 
I  visited  Sunset  she  would  tell  me  what  “your  Mudder”,  (by 
which  she  meant  Mrs.  Johnson)  had  said  about  her  work  and 
would  implore  me  to  come  and  see  how  well  she  had  “sham- 
pooned  de  basement”.  Then  next  day  she  would  tell  my  wife 
what  “your  Fadder”  had  said,  how  I  had  “bragged  on  de  base¬ 
ment”.* 

Most  appealing  of  all  the  touching  sights  in  the  institution, 
is  to  see  the  tenderness  and  patience  exercised  by  a  big  over 
grown  man-baby  or  woman-baby,  towards  a  tiny  child-baby  when 
put  in  their  care.  The  maternal  instinct  is  almost  always  pres¬ 
ent,  and  is  often  as  strong  in  the  males  as  in  the  females ;  fortu¬ 
nately  for  them  and  for  us  it  is  much  stronger  than  the  sex 
instinct.  Here  is  a  place  which  the  imbecile  can  fill  often  as 
well  as,  and  certainly  more  willingly  than  a  hired  helper.  For 
the  one  thing  the  feeble-minded  child,  like  every  other  child,  must 
have,  no  matter  how  many  so-called  necessaries  he  can  do  with¬ 
out,  is  love  from  the  one  who  tends  him.  With  whatever  defects 
the  capacity  to  love  and  the  craving  for  being  loved,  are  usually 
present  in  the  feeble-minded.  One  of  the  pathetic  questions  I 
used  to  hear  often  as  I  went  among  mly  children  was,  “do  you 
like  me?”  The  need  of  someone  to  love  her  and  whom  she  can 
love,  which  in  the  outer  world  so  often  betravs  the  feeble-minded 
girl  in  the  institution  may  make  her  chief  usefulness. 

When  we  take  a  child  from  his  natural  surroundings  because 
they  are  uncleanly  and  his  mother  is  ignorant,  hardly  knowing 
how  to  feed  herself,  still  less  him ;  and  place  him  under  perfectly 
sanitary  conditions  on  a  scientifically  accurate  diet  but  without 

•At  a  recent  visit,  September  21,  1922,  I  found  Pearl,  still  a  useful 
worker,  still,  so  she  told  me,  “shampooning  de  basement”  and  when  I  told 
her  “my  Mudder”  was  dead,  she  cried. 


Adventures  in  Construction 


225 


mother  love;  we  may  be  supplying  his  lesser  needs,  and  taking 
from  him  the  most  essential  thing  in  life. 

Many  of  our  imbeciles  were  taught  to  wait  on  and  care  for 
the  idiots,  some  of  whom  were  quite  helpless.  Lucinda  was  about 
twenty-five,  tall  and  strong,  usually  cheerful  and  good  natured 
with  a  mentality  below  six  years  on  the  Binet  scale.  Her  work  in 
life  was  the  care  of  Mary,  a  helpless  idiot  of  forty-five,  speech¬ 
less,  ugly,  deformed,  unable  to  do  one  hand’s  turn  for  herself, 
who  had  to  be  washed  and  tended  like  a  baby.  Bepulsive  as  the 
task  of  caring  for  such  an  idiot  would  have  been  to  a  normal 
person,  Lucinda  loved  Mary  as  a  mother  loves  her  baby  and  found 
nothing  disgusting  in  what  she  did  for  her.  Every  morning  when 
the  whistle  blew  she  rose  and  after  her  own  toilet,  carried  Mary 
to  the  bathroom  washed  and  dressed  her.  When  the  breakfast 
bell  rang,  Lucinda  put  Mary  in  her  wheel-chair,  took  her  to  the 
dining  room  and  fed  her.  After  breakfast,  an  airing  on  the  gravel 
walk,  or  if  it  rained,  under  the  corridor. 

On  the  monthly  weighing  day  Lucinda  wheeled  Mary  along¬ 
side  the  platform  scale,  took  her  in  her  arms,  stepped  with  her 
onto  the  scale,  and  then,  putting  her  back,  stepped  on  alone. 
She  knew  the  difference  was  Mary’s  weight  and  was  proud  and 
happy  when  Mary  had  gained  half  a  pound. 

But  Lucinda  had  one  fault,  she  would  sometimes  get  very 
angry  and  when  in  her  “tantrums”  would  tear  up  her  clothes. 
On  one  such  occasion  an  attendant  put  her  in  a  “quiet  room”, 
one  well  lighted  and  warmed  but  without  furniture,  a  usual  mild, 
disciplinary  method.  Going  back  in  an  hour  or  two,  she  found 
her  sitting  in  the  corner  stark  naked  with  all  her  clothing,  except 
the  soles  of  her  shoes,  in  tiny  shreds  in  a  heap  on  the  floor. 

Now  a  superintendent’s  prime  qualification  is  to  know  what 
to  do  when  nobody  else  does,  and  Lucinda  was  brought  to  me  for 
treatment.  We  had  just  opened  a  new  cottage  for  adult  females 
and  Mary’s  age  entitled  her  to  admission.  I  knew  how  Lucinda 
loved  the  poor  creature  so  I  said  to  her,  “now  Lucinda,  the  next 
time  you  tear  up  your  clothes  I  shall  take  Mary  away  from  you 
and  put  her  in  ‘Harper  Lodge’.  Whereupon  Lucinda  wept  copi¬ 
ously  and  begged  me  not  to  take  Mary  away  promising  she  would 
never  again  be  guilty.  The  threat  was  enough.  Thereafter  if 
any  evidence  of  destructiveness  appeared,  a  reminder  of  the 
danger  of  losing  Mary  always  had  the  desired  effect. 


226 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


The  idiots  and  imbeciles  were  well  cared  for  in  Sunset  Cot¬ 
tage,  and  the  per  capita  cost  was  the  lowest  of  any  department 
of  the  institution  except  that  of  Colonia.  I  was  rather  proud  to 
believe  that  no  others  of  the  class,  in  any  institution  I  had  ever 
seen,  were  so  well  cared  for  made  as  nearly  happy  as  they,  and 
none  who  had  anything  like  adequate  care,  cost  the  taxpayers  so 
small  an  amount  each. 

Harper  Lodge  and  the  Adult-Females 

Of  all  the  many  classes  of  defective  people,  the  one  most  need¬ 
ing  the  care  and  protection  of  the  state,  is  that  of  the  adolescent 
and  post-adolescent  female  imbeciles  and  morons.  No  other  class 
is  so  easily  and  so  sadly  victimized.  If  not  protected  they  will 
be  the  mothers  of  the  next  generation  of  mental  defectives.  They 
are  a  much  greater  source  of  danger  to  the  community  than  the 
male  imbeciles;  and  this  is  not  because  of  vicious  tendencies  in 
themselves.  There  is  a  common  opinion  that  the  feeble-minded 
are  excessively  erotic,  but  this  is  erroneous;  the  sexual  urge  in 
them  is  usually  less  strong  than  in  the  normal.  What  seems 
eroticism  is  really  weakness  of  self-control.  While  the  mother 
of  a  feeble-minded  child  is  usually  a  feeble-minded  woman,  the 
father  is  usually  of  a  different  class.  Only  an  extremely  depraved 
woman  will  have  illicit  relations  with  an  imbecile  man ;  but  the 
imbecile  girl  is  recognized  as  proper  sexual  prey  by  many  boys 
and  men  who  pass  muster  as  ordinary  citizens,  as  well  as  by  more 
depraved  beings. 

At  the  legislative  session  of  1901,  with  the  help  of  the  Board 
of  State  Charities,  the  State  Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs,  and 
some  other  organizations  of  socially  minded  people;  I  succeeded 
in  getting  a  law  for  the  reception  by  commitment  of  feeble¬ 
minded  females,  between  the  ages  of  15  and  45,  to  be  held  until  in 
the  judgment  of  the  Board,  it  was  best  for  them  or  for  the  state, 
that  they  should  be  discharged.  All  the  previous  receptions  had 
been  by  simple  admission  of  children  below  16,  the  parents  or 
guardians  applying  having  the  right  of  withdrawal. 

The  bill  carried  a  modest  appropriation  for  building  and  by 
this  time  I  had  become  a  capable  designer.  We  engaged  an 
architect  of  great  ability  and  he  welcomed  my  floor  plans  and 
drafted  a  cottage  to  fit  them.  The  design  was  simple  but  attrac- 


Adventures  in  Construction 


227 


tive,  the  bricks  had  been  made  with  special  care  as  told  in  the 
chapter  on  the  brick  yard ;  and  the  cottage  was  the  best  building 
on  the  grounds  and  considering  its  quality  much  the  most  eco¬ 
nomically  constructed.  It  was  named  Harper  Lodge  in  honor 
of  the  gracious  lady  who  was  the  woman  member  of  the  Board 
and  whose  never  failing  sympathy  and  appreciation  were  most 
helpful  to  the  matron  and  superintendent  in  their  arduous  duties. 

The  capacity  of  the  cottage  was  124  beds.  It  was  opened  in 
August,  1902,  and  in  a  few  days  sixty  new-comers  were  received. 
The  new  class  of  “children”,  with  the  new  cottage  designed  espe¬ 
cially  for  them,  presented  a  fine  opportunity  to  try  out  some  of 
the  theories  about  the  care  of  adult  female  imbeciles,  which  had 
long  been  seething  in  my  brain. 

These  new  children,  aged  15  to  45,  were  received  with  some 
apprehension.  It  had  been  proved  quite  feasible  to  control  and 
employ  adults  who  had  grown  up  from  childhood  of  body  in  the 
institution  and  who  were  therefore  “institutionized”.  For  nor¬ 
mal  children  to  be  institutionized  is  a  calamity,  it  unfits  them 
for  the  rude  shocks  of  the  outer  world  which  come  when  they 
leave  their  safe  harbor.  But  to  the  feeble  minded  who  should 
never  be  exposed  to  those  rude  shocks,  it  is  the  best  thing  that 
can  happen.  Institutionism  means  submission  to  control,  cheer¬ 
ful  obedience  to  command  and  the  life  of  the  feeble-minded  to 
be  happy,  safe  and  successful,  needs  just  these  conditions  and 
needs  them  permanently. 

Now  we  were  to  care  for  a  group  of  adults  in  body,  children 
or  babes  in  mind,  who  had  never  felt  the  gentle  but  firm  influence 
of  good  institution  life.  Many  of  them  had  come  from  the  worst 
kind  of  environment.  A  few  of  them  were  helpless  idiots  but 
many  were  capable  physically  and  even  mentally,  of  a  good  deal 
of  usefulness.  How  to  control  these  new  children,  how  to  dis¬ 
cover  and  develop  their  capacities,  were  problems  which  were 
faced  with  some  anxiety. 

Fortunately  for  me  I  had  in  my  wife  a  helpmate  of  rare 
quality,  resourceful,  capable  and  with  a  heart  full  of  sympathy 
for  all  under  her  care.  Wordsworth  might  have  known  her  when 
he  wrote, 

“A  noble  creature  wisely  planned, 

To  guide,  to  comfort  and  command.” 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 

The  personnel  of  the  new  cottage  was  chosen  with  great  care. 
The  house  mother  was  Miss  Battershall,  whose  name  I  write 
with  affection  and  respect.  She  had  been  head  attendant  of  a 
division  of  moron  girls,  whom  she  managed  admirably  since  she 
secured  their  love  as  well  as  their  obedience.  The  assistants 
were  chosen  for  proved  ability  and  loyalty.  Then  for  the  house¬ 
work  of  the  cottage,  ten  moron  girls  who  had  grown  up  and  been 
well  trained  in  the  institution  were  drafted  as  aids. 

The  task  was  not  only  to  care  for  the  new  inmates  but  to 
develop  their  capacity.  Mrs.  Johnson  and  Miss  Battershall  set 
themselves  to  it  and  were  successful  far  beyond  my  most  enthu¬ 
siastic  hopes.  By  the  end  of  the  first  year  the  cottage  was  full ; 
the  new-comers  had  been  trained  to  do  the  housework  so  that 
not  only  had  the  ten  aids  been  returned  to  the  main  building  but 
three  of  the  new  ones  had  been  transferred  there  for  useful 
employment. 

One  of  the  perennial  worries  in  most  institutions  comes  from 
the  laundry  work.  The  amount  of  it  is  so  great  and  increases 
so  rapidly  in  a  growing  plant  that  it  is  hard  to  keep  up  with  it. 
At  Harper  Lodge  the  children  were  trained  to  do  their  own 
washing.  A  simple  hand-laundry  was  equipped  in  the  basement 
and  beginning  with  their  hose,  then  their  underwear,  in  a  few 
months  they  were  washing,  starching  and  ironing  all  their  clothes. 
The  mending  room  underwent  a  similar  evolution.  Imbeciles 
who  had  never  seen  a  needle  were  taught,  often  to  their  great 
delight,  what  sewing  can  do.  The  dining  room,  scullery,  and 
kitchen  were  controlled  by  one  head  cook  who  marshalled  a 
force  of  ten  children  and  taught  them  to  help  in  the  kitchen  and 
to  wait  at  table. 

The  cottage  grounds  were  ornamented  with  flowers  and 
shrubs  tended  by  the  children.  Two  acres  of  good  land  which 
had  been  in  field  crops  for  several  years,  were  plowed  and  turned 
over  to  the  cottagers.  Miss  Battershall  was  a  farmer’s  daughter 
and  loved  gardening,  and  under  her  care  the  children  planted, 
hoed  and  cropped.  Their  garden  was  always  ahead  of  the  others 
on  the  estate,  they  were  proud  of  the  earliest  radishes,  the  best 
lettuce  and  finest  tomatoes.  The  experiment  was  a  most  grati¬ 
fying  success. 


Adventures  in  Construction 


229 


Incidentally  the  per  capita  cost  was  remarkably  low,  the 
number  of  employees  being  the  minimum  and  the  proportion  of 
self-help  the  maximum  of  any  department  of  the  institution.  It 
was  an  emphatic  demonstration  of  how  to  care  for  adult  feeble¬ 
minded  females. 

Out  of  the  success  of  Harper  Lodge  came  a  day  dream  of 
the  future  which  I  did  not  live  in  the  institution  long  enough 
to  make  into  a  reality.  The  vision  was  of  a  colony  with  hundreds 
of  girl  colonists;  the  employees  of  every  grade  including  engi¬ 
neers  and  farm  managers,  to  be  women.  The  industries  to  be 
first,  the  laundry  for  the  Colony  and  also  for  the  rest  of  the 
institution;  which  by  that  time  would  have  grown  to  2,000 
inmates ;  then  the  making  of  clothing  for  all ;  then  fruit  growing, 
canning,  preserving  and  drying;  then  poultry  raising.  I  had 
actually  selected  the  site  for  the  colony  houses  on  a  hill  in  plain 
view  of  the  high-road,  but  separated  from  it  by  a  large  field  and 
then  a  wide  brook  which  should  serve  as  a  moat  and  also  as  a 
fish  preserve;  perhaps  even  as  a  swimming  pool;  all  to  be  sur¬ 
rounded  by  a  stout  ten-foot  barb  wire  fence  which  should  be  the 
stay  of  a  high  mock-orange  hedge.  I  dreamed  of  calling  it  “The 
Grange”  and  using  as  a  motto  a  quotation  from  Tennyson’s 
Marianna  in  the  Moated  Grange  “He  cometh  not,  she  said”. 
It  was  to  be  a  place  where  no  male  came;  where  there  could  be 
absolute  freedom  within  the  sacred  enclosure.  I  believed,  aud 
still  believe,  that  such  a  colony  would  be  one  of  the  most  valuable 
investments  any  state  could  make;  that  once  equipped  the  cost 
would  be  insignificant  since  the  industries  would  nearly  support 
it,  while  the  benefit  to  the  state  in  preventing  the  propagation  of 
what  would  otherwise  be  the  next  generation  of  idiots  and  imbe¬ 
ciles  would  be  incalculable. 

The  probability  of  the  prevention  of  feeblemindedness  by 
sterilization  is  so  remote;  the  possibility  of  prevention  by  segre¬ 
gation  so  positive ;  that  altho  I  fear  I  shall  not  live  to  see  it  I  am 
optimistic  enough  to  believe  that  some  day  it  will  be  effected 
in  many  states  on  some  such  plan  as  my  dream  of  the  Moated 
Grange. 

The  development  of  low-grade  labor  illustrated  in  the  story 
of  Harper  Lodge,  was  typical  of  all  parts  of  the  institution. 
There  was  nothing  more  satisfactory  than  this.  It  was  not  merely 


230 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


that  waste  humanity  was  salvaged  and  made  of  use,  but  the  gain 
in  the  life  and  happiness  of  the  laborers  was  still  more  gratify¬ 
ing.  To  see  a  big  uncouth  idiot  boy,  who  had  always  been  an  eye¬ 
sore;  with  his  clothes  unbuttoned,  his  shoes  unlaced,  slobbering 
and  dirty;  transformed  into  a  decent-looking  laborer  shoveling 
clay  into  a  wagon  at  the  brick  yard  or  gathering  up  and  piling 
firing  in  the  woods ;  was  one  of  the  sights  that  made  the  thought 
and  effort  which  had  produced  the  result  well  worth  while.  And 
such  things  were  done  more  and  more  as  knowledge  and  experi¬ 
ence  showed  the  way.  I  felt  that  the  degree  to  which  the  lower 
grades  could  be  employed,  and  the  amount  of  increased  happiness 
and  fulness  of  life  which  would  result  from  such  employment, 
were  still  unknown.  The  more  it  was  tried  the  more  it  was 
found  possible.  I  had  set  this  before  myself  as  one  of  my  main 
tasks  and  had  the  satisfaction  that  comes  of  real  achievement. 
I  honestly  believed  that  no  other  institution  of  the  kind  in  the 
land  had  done  better  and  very  few  as  well  in  the  useful  and 
happy  employment  of  its  inmates. 

It  was  a  saddening  commentary  on  institution  management 
when  I  was  told  by  the  superintendent  who  followed  my  imme¬ 
diate  successor,  that  when  he  assumed  control,  which  was  ten 
years  after  my  resignation,  he  found  the  employment  of  the 
inmates  the  very  weakest  department  of  the  institution. 

s  The  House  at  Colonia 

In  the  winter  of  1896  a  bequest  of  $1,000.00  came  to  the  School 
from  a  citizen  of  DeKalb  county.  The  farm  house  at  Colonia 
could  only  shelter  twenty  boys  and  I  was  anxious  to  develop  the 
plant,  especially  in  view  of  our  long  waiting  list  which ,  about 
that  time  contained  over  200  names.  So  the  money  was  used  to 
begin  a  house  which  later  grew  to  be  a  handsome  structure,  too 
large  to  be  justly  called  a  cottage  tho  no  larger  than  many 
houses  called  by  that  name  at  other  institutions  and  at  our  own. 

All  the  numerous  farm  buildings  which  were  constructed, 
barns,  stables,  etc.,  well  served  their  purpose,  they  were  models 
of  efficiency  and  economy.  But  I  have  no  greater  regret  about 
anything  connected  with  my  institution  experience  than  of  a 
radical  error  in  planning  the  main  house  at  Colonia.  Instead 
of  attempting  the  small  cottage  plan  I  began  a  congregate  build- 


Adventures  in  Construction 


231 


ing,  which  altho  when  completed  later  looked  well  from  the  road 
and  had  many  convenient  features,  was  never  what  might  have 
been  had  I  been  true  to  the  best  I  knew.  And  some  disastrous 
consequences  which  followed  have  left  bitter  memories. 

We  had  a  tiny  appropriation  that  year  for  unspecified 
“Improvements”.  This  with  the  bequest  was  enough  to  build 
one  wing;  and  we  had  to  save  from  maintenance  appropriation 
to  complete  it.  „  It  was  hard  to  get  money  to  go  on  with  the  work 
and  some  unlawful  debts  were  contracted  forestalling  hoped  for 
appropriations  which  failed  us.  It  was  necessary  either  to  do 
this  or  to  expose  an  unfinished  house  to  the  winter  storms;  and 
the  latter  seemed  the  greater  evil.  Had  I  foreseen  all  the  con¬ 
sequences  I  should  have  made  a  very  different  choice  of  evils. 


Chapter  Seven 


ADVENTURES  IN  NUTRITION 

One  of  the  constant  cares  of  the  head  of  an  institution  is  the 
food  supply,  both  for  the  inmates  and  the  employees.  Any  man 
can  lead  a  horse  to  water  but  no  one  can  make  him  drink.  The 
most  careful  and  scientific  dietary  is  valueless  unless  your  people 
eat  it.  The  dyspepsia  which  is  one  of  the  chronic  institution 
troubles  among  both  inmates  and  employees,  is  often  due  at  least 
to  some  extent  to  the  deadly  monotony  of  the  diet;  a  weekly 
repetition  of  the  same  bill  of  fare  which  you  may  not  choose  for 
yourself,  sometimes  eaten  with  a  grudge  against  some  dish  which 
you  don’t  like  but  which  comes  along  in  regular  sequence.  This 
violates  the  rule  “now  good  digestion  wait  on  appetite  and  health 
on  both”. 

So  it  is  not  enough  that  the  dietary  contain  the  requisite 
number  of  calories  and  the  various  salts  and  vitamines,  it  must 
also  taste  good  and  be  varied.  One  of  my  many  day  dreams  of 
the  future  which  I  did  not  live  long  enough  in  the  institution  to 
attempt  was  of  a  possible  a  la  carte  service  for  the  employees 
tables,  with  a  price  set  against  each  dish  and  a  definite  allowance 
for  each  person,  from  which  each  might  save  if  he  would  or 
exceed  if  he  chose  to  pay  the  difference. 

When  I  took  charge  in  J uly  1893,  in  dining  room  Q,  where  the 
attendants  and  industrial  people  ate,  for  four  years  beefsteak 
had  been  served  for  breakfast  364  days  in  the  year;  on  each 
Easter  Sunday  morning  they  had  eggs  for  a  change.  I  began  to 
give  them  a  reasonable  variety  using  broiled  ham,  bacon  and 
eggs  and  other  appetizing  dishes,  with  always  fish  on  Friday. 
An  attendant  who  left  the  service  for  that  of  a  hospital  for 
insane,  told  a  friend  that  she  liked  insane  people  to  work  for 
better  than  the  feeble-minded,  but  she  did  wish  the  hospital  had 
the  Fort  Wayne  bill  of  fare. 


(232) 


Adventures  in  Nutrition 


233 


Much  of  the  dislike  of  certain  dishes  is  purely  psychological 
and  that  is  the  hardest  to  overcome  and  the  children  are  not  the 
worst  food  faddists.  One  good  food  which  is  absurdly  unpopular 
in  Indiana,  is  mutton.  Now  mutton  or  lamb,  is  the  best  of  the 
meats,  most  easily  digested,  making  the  best  stews  and  broths, 
as  well  as  roasts.  I  wanted  to  use  it  at  least  as  often  as  pork 
which  with  the  possible  exception  of  veal,  is  the  only  meat  as 
popular  as  beef  (except  of  course  chicken  which  belongs  on  Sun¬ 
day).  It  was  possible  by  careful  camouflaging  to  get  the  children 
to  eat  mutton,  but  with  the  employees  except  those  of  the  higher 
grades,  it  could  not  be  done. 

On  one  occasion  some  very  choice  young  lamb  was  served  in 
dining  room  Q.  A  woman  attendant  was  eating  it  supposing  it 
to  be  veal  and  remarked  to  a  neighbor  on  what  nice  veal  we  were 
getting.  She  was  overheard  by  a  moron  waitress  who  said,  “Oh, 
Mrs.  McChesney,  that’s  not  veal  it’s  lamb”.  Whereon  the  lady 
pushed  back  her  plate  and  said  “I  never  could  eat  lamb”. 

When  I  succeeded  in  growing  asparagus  I  was  delighted  when 
the  crop  became  adequate  for  the  tables  in  the  rear-center  as 
well  as  the  front-center,  dining  rooms.  The  first  batch  served 
in  Q,  was  thrown  away  because  it  “tasted  bitter”.  Thenceforth 
this  choicest  of  vegetables  was  used  only  in  the  front-center  and 
on  the  tables  of  the  feeble-minded  children. 

As  a  small  boy  in  my  English  home  the  main  element  of 
breakfast  used  to  be  a  bowl  of  oatmeal  porridge.  When  I  under¬ 
took  to  feed  children  by  the  hundred,  I  naturally  thought  of  the 
good  food  which  old  Sam  Johnson  said  was  eaten  by  horses  in 
England  and  by  men  in  Scotland ;  which  gave  Boswell  the  chance 
for  one  of  his  most  brilliant  retorts,  “and  where  will  you  find 
such  men  and  where  such  horses?”  The  feeble-minded  children 
objected  to  any  cereal  but  rice  which  is  the  poorest  in  food  ele¬ 
ments  of  all  and  they  shared  Sam  Johnson’s  opinion  about  oat¬ 
meal.  I  declared  to  my  staff  that  the  children  were  going  to 
eat  oatmeal  and  relish  it.  I  was  told  it  could  not  be  done,  it  had 
been  tried  in  vain;  to  put  oatmeal  mush  on  their  tables  was  to 
waste  it.  But  I  told  them  it  had  not  been  tried  my  way. 

I  selected  for  my  experiment  half  of  a  division  of  little  boys, 
at  a  table  of  sixteen.  I  told  the  attendant  and  his  wife  (for  little 
boys  a  married  couple  is  preferred.)  what  I  intended  to  do. 


234 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


They  were  skeptical  but  were  loyal  people  and  agreed  to  try.  I 
impressed  upon  them  that  they  must  tell  the  children  the  new 
food  was  good  and  must  sedulously  ignore  previous  failures  to 
use  it.  The  morning  of  the  experiment  I  went  to  the  boys  big 
dining  room  where  240  ate,  making  sure  that  the  mush  was 
thoroly  cooked  well  salted  in  the  cooking  and  served  hot.  Then 
a  small  serving  was  given  each  child  with  milk  and  syrup  poured 
on  it  and  the  attendants  and  I  urged  the  children,  who  at  first 
refused,  just  to  taste  it.  One  of  the  brightest  of  them,  a  little 
moron  who  was  the  leader  of  the  group,  stoutly  refused,  setting 
his  face  like  a  flint.  I  put  my  arm  around  his  neck,  pried  his 
mouth  open  and  put  in  a  spoonful  with  plenty  of  milk  and  syrup 
on  it.  The  little  chap  gulped  it  down  smacked  his  lips  and  said 
so  all  the  table  could  hear,  “gee,  you  know  what’s  good  to  eat”, 
and  the  victory  was  won;  that  very  first  morning  all  sixteen  at 
that  table  ate  their  oatmeal.  The  second  morning  thereafter  it 
was  served  again  at  the  same  table  with  equal  success  and  so  on 
for  six  days  each  alternate  morning.  Then  the  other  boys  of  the 
same  group  asked  for  it  and  for  two  weeks  it  was  restricted  to 
division  one.  By  this  time  all  the  other  boys  knew  what  a  choice 
delicacy  was  being  reserved  for  the  little  chaps,  and  wanted  to 
know  why  they  could  not  have  some  also.  Then  in  a  week  or 
two  the  girls  had  heard  the  news  and  put  in  a  claim  for  their 
dining  room.  Thenceforth  that  best  of  cereals  was  used  about 
twice  a  week. 

An  intelligent  woman  attendant  who  had  charge  of  a  division 
of  low-grade  children,  noticed  that  about  10 :30  each  morning  her 
charges  became  restless  and  hard  to  control.  She  suggested  that 
she  thought  they  were  hungry,  (they  were  of  too  low  a  grade  to 
tell  their  wants),  and  asked  to  be  allowed  to  give  them  a  lunch. 
This  worked  so  well  that  it  quickly  spread  thru  the  institution 
and  the  10:30  lunch  became  general.  One  morning  a  visitor  to 
the  school,  who  had  always  been  critical  and  rather  unfriendly 
to  me,  walked  over  to  witness  the  excavation  being  made  for  a 
new  cottage.  This  was  particularly  interesting  because  the  dirt 
was  being  removed  in  little  trucks  on  a  temporary  railway,  to 
fill  up  an  unsightly  hollow.  About  five  employees  and  twenty- 
five  boys  were  at  the  work.  As  he  was  commenting  on  the  display 
of  engineering,  a  boy  arrived  with  a  basket  of  lunch  for  the 


Adventures  in  Nutrition 


235 


laborers.  Such  consideration  for  imbeciles  struck  the  visitor  as 
so  remarkable  that  he  was  completely  converted  and  became  as 
enthusiastic  over  my  management  as  he  had  formerly  been 
critical. 

In  choosing  a  balanced  ration  when  economy  of  cost  must  be 
considered,  a  serious  problem  is  the  supply  of  protein.  For  that, 
meat  is  always  available  and  always  eaten,  but  it  is  the  most 
costly  part  of  the  diet.  Beans,  which  supply  ample  protein  can¬ 
not  be  used  often  because  of  digestive  disturbances.  Salt  cod 
fish,  a  cheap  food,  rich  in  protein,  and  which  Eastern  institutions 
use  freely,  is  unpopular  and  practically  unusable  in  Indiana.  It 
is  inevitable  in  institution  cooking  on  a  large  scale  that  much  of 
the  meat  must  be  served  in  stews  and  hashes,  and  these  are  often 
made  with  so  little  variety  of  flavor  that  the  inmates  get  very 
tired  of  them.  I  used  the  time  honored  Irish  Stew  and  Hun¬ 
garian  Goulash  and  taught  the  cooks  other  kinds  to  which  I  gave 
attractive  names  and  in  which  while  the  ingredients  were  the 
same  the  appearance,  odor  and  flavor  were  distinctive. 

I  early  established  the  custom  of  weighing  each  child,  on 
admission  and  monthly  thereafter.  I  was  particularly  careful 
that  an  ample  supply  of  pure  drinking  water  be  always  avail¬ 
able,  and  discountenanced  and  abolished  the  institution  habit 
of  refusing  a  drink  to  a  thirsty  child  near  bedtime. 

I  had  reduced  the  proportion  of  meat  in  the  dietary  to  what  I 
believed  was  a  reasonable  minimum.  One  day  I  got  a  letter  from 
Butler,  Secretary  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  asking  my 
opinion  on  the  relative  proportions  of  meat  per  day,  per  inmate, 
in  the  twelve  State  Institutions,  with  a  chart  showing  the  quan¬ 
tity  used  in  each.  The  highest  amount  was  nineteen  ounces  in 
one  of  the  hospitals  for  insane,  the  lowest  seven  ounces  which 
was  in  my  school.  Mr.  Butler,  I  have  no  doubt,  intended  his 
letter  as  a  gentle  criticism  of  my  supposed  over  zealous  economy, 
tho  he  did  not  say  so. 

I  answered  his  letter  saying  there  was  evidently  gross  waste 
in  some  of  the  institutions;  reminded  him  that  the  U.  S.  Army 
ration  was  sixteen  ounces  of  beef  or  twelve  of  pork.  I  said  that 
while  the  ration  of  the  children  could  not  be  worked  out  so  accu¬ 
rately  in  terms  of  proteids,  carbo-hydrates  and  fats  as  that  of 
the  cows  and  must  after  all  be  done  somewhat  by  rule  of  thumb 


236  Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 

or  of  trial  and  error,  I  believed  that  when  children  showed  steady 
and  satisfactory  gain  in  weight  and  looked  well;  they  were  prob¬ 
ably  well  fed. 

I  enclosed  a  statement  showing  for  the  past  two  years  the 
average  increase  in  weight  of  the  children  who  were  gaining ;  and 
an  explanation,  as  for  instance  that  they  were  sick  in  the  hos¬ 
pital,  or  full  grown,  of  those  cases  where  the  weight  was  station¬ 
ary.  I  called  his  attention  to  the  fact  that  my  use  of  milk  was 
much  greater  per  capita,  than  that  of  any  other  institution ;  that 
many  of  my  inmates  were  small  children  and  many  epileptics 
for  whom  meat  must  be  used  sparingly.  I  said  that  in  my  opin¬ 
ion  the  purpose  of  meat  in  an  institution  dietary  is  rather  to 
furnish  flavor  than  sustenance.  I  reminded  him  that  some  very 
robust  races  of  men  eat  very  little  meat  and  that  there  are  many 
vegetarians  whose  preference  for  vegetable  food  is  not  mere 
sentiment  but  is  based  on  convictions  of  its  value. 

Then  I  said  I  would  give  him  two  instances,  one  ancient  and 
one  modern,  of  vegetarian  diet  which  seemed  to  have  resulted 
satisfactorily.  The  modern  instance  was  that  of  a  100  mile  road 
race  in  Germany,  where  of  the  ninety-three  competitors,  the  first 
three  at  the  post  had  trained  on  a  vegetable  diet.  The  ancient 
one  was  the  well  known  case  of  Shadrach,  Meshach  and  Abed- 
nego  told  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  who  when  they  refused  to  eat 
the  King’s  meat  and  drink  the  King’s  wine  preferring  to  be  fed 
on  peas  and  beans  (pulse)  not  only  showed  more  flesh  and  better 
complexions  than  their  carnivorous  competitors,  but  also  devel¬ 
oped  a  remarkable  ability  to  stand  fire.  Butler  never  answered 
my  letter,  but  I  read  his  challenge  and  my  answer,  to  my  own 
Board,  whom  I  always  tried  to  keep  en  rapport  with  whatever 
came  from  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  one  of  whom  was  almost 
a  vegetarian,  and  another  a  lady  who  had  advanced  views  on  diet 
of  children  which  quite  agreed  with  my  own. 

One  valid  reason  for  dairying  and  fruit  growing  on  an  insti¬ 
tution  farm  inheres  in  the  fact  that  there  are  certain  articles  of 
diet,  which,  while  they  are  valuable  and  palatable,  are  rather 
costly  to  buy  and  are  on  the  verge  of  being  considered  delicacies. 
This  should  certainly  not  be  the  case  with  milk  which  is  the 
most  important  element  of  children’s  food.  Yet  it  is  true  that 
very  few  of  the  institutions  which  do  not  produce  their  own 


Adventures  tn  Nutrition 


237 


supply,  buy  as  much  milk  as  it  would  be  well  for  them  to  use. 
This  is  still  more  true  about  fresh  fruit.  Most  schools  use  as 
many  dried  peaches  and  prunes  as  they  think  desirable,  but 
unless  they  grow  their  own  strawberries  and  blackberries  the 
supply  of  these  is  never  adequate. 

The  price  to  the  consumer  of  many  articles  of  diet,  is  based 
as  much  on  the  cost  of  transportation  and  merchandising  as  on 
that  of  production.  When  food  is  used  on  the  farm  where  it  is 
grown,  these  added  charges  are  eliminated,  so  that  even  if  the 
first  cost  is  a  little  more  on  the  institution  farm  than  on  one 
where  the  owner  is  the  farmer  and  his  whole  energies  are  given 
to  producing  the  crop  at  the  lowest  cost;  yet  the  final  expense 
is  much  less. 

When  I  told  my  Board  I  wanted  a  farm  they  asked  if  I  could 
make  farming  pay.  I  told  them  that  with  a  home  market  at 
highest  market  price  for  everything  we  could  raise;  with  no 
expense  for  hauling  or  selling;  if  an  institution  farm  with  an 
abundant  supply  of  free  common  labor  and  moderately  good  man¬ 
agement  does  not  pay;  then  surely  the  farmers  of  the  country 
must  be  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy. 

One  of  the  problems  of  the  commercial  small-fruit  grower  is 
to  find  a  supply  of  pickers.  We  trained  our  children,  especially 
the  little  girls  to  this  work  and  the  berrv-picking  season  was  a 
time  of  joy.  The  best  way  to  get  work  done  at  any  rate  by  feeble¬ 
minded  children,  is  to  make  it  a  privilege  and  a  play.  Straw¬ 
berry  picking  was  one  of  the  little  festivals  of  which  I  made  use 
to  keep  in  touch  with  my  children.  I  would  start  out  a  group  of 
thirty  or  forty  little  girls  to  the  patch,  first  giving  them  a  story 
of  what  they  were  to  do  and  exacting  a  solemn  promise  that  they 
would  put  two  berries  in  the  basket  for  every  one  they  ate.  After 
the  second  or  third  day’s  picking  this  restriction  was  not  needed. 
T  have  known  of  children  who  worked  at  berry-picking  being 
punished  if  they  were  caught  eating  one  but  T  remembered  my 
own  childhood,  as  well  as  the  Scriptural  command,  “thou  shalt 
not  muzzle  the  ox  when  be  treadeth  out  the  corn”. 


Chapter  Eight 


AN  ADVENTURE  IN  INVESTIGATION 

There  is  a  French  proverb  which  says  one  must  not  speak  of 
a  rope  in  the  house  of  a  man  who  has  been  hanged.  For  years 
the  word  “investigation”  was  taboo  in  my  household.  I  who  as 
Secretary  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities  had  conducted  investi¬ 
gations  of  others,  became  the  subject  of  one  myself.  Altho  I 
came  out  of  it  easily  and  its  net  results  were  fortunate  both  for 
me  and  for  the  institution,  yet  the  operation  was  painful  while 
it  lasted. 

It  happened  that  the  Republicans  won  the  general  election  in 
1894  and  for  the  first  time  in  many  years  had  a  majority  in  the 
legislature,  altho  the  Democratic  Governor  had  still  two  years 
to  serve.  In  1889  a  Democratic  legislature  had  taken  from  a 
Republican  Governor  the  power  of  appointing  trustees  for  the 
State  institutions  but  two  years  later  a  Democratic  Governor 
had  been  elected  and  the  appointing  power  replaced  where  it 
properly  belonged.  Now  the  conditions  of  1889  were  reversed, 
the  Governor  was  a  Democrat,  the  General  Assembly  had  a 
Republican  majority.  Some  of  the  party  henchmen  were  eager 
to  give  the  Democrats  a  dose  of  their  own  medicine  by  taking 
the  Governor’s  power  away;  and  then  to  make  a  clean  sweep 
of  every  possible  Democratic  office  holder. 

The  matter  was  hotly  debated.  The  better  Republicans 
opposed  the  nefarious  design  which  was  flatly  against  the  party’s 
policy  as  declared  in  the  platform  on  which  the  last  campaign 
had  been  conducted.  But  the  temptation  was  strong  and  for  a 
time  things  looked  squally  for  a  Democrat  who  was  in  the  state’s 
service. 

In  some  way  I  have  never  been  able  to  make  out  I  had 
incurred  the  animosity  of  a  Republican  Senator,  who  had 
declared  to  a  friend,  who  told  a  friend  of  mine,  that  he  would 
“have  Johnson’s  scalp  if  it  took  him  ten  years”.  This  Senator 

238) 


An  Adventure  in  Investigation 


239 


had  secured  the  chairmanship  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  Benev¬ 
olent  Institutions.  He  was  a  lewd  and  offensive  person,  his  pri¬ 
vate  life  very  unsavory.  But  he  was  a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War, 
an  officer  of  the  G.  A.  R.  and  had  “influence”. 

I  had  two  other  enemies  who  belonged  to  the  party  in  power 
and  thought  an  opportunity  had  come  to  use  their  political  con¬ 
nections  for  their  own  benefit  and  my  hurt.  One  of  these  was 
a  physician  who  had  a  feeble-minded  sou  among  my  pupils.  He 
had  no  particular  animosity  against  me,  but  he  wanted  my  job. 
The  other  was  the  doctor  employed  at  the  School  who  had  been 
illegally  re-appointed  by  my  Board  and  who  knew  I  was  dissatis¬ 
fied  with  his  services.  He  also  thought  he  would  like  the  job 
and  in  the  hope  of  something  happening,  had  been  keeping  a 
“black  book”  on  me  for  more  than  a  year  past,  noting  down 
every  accident  or  error  he  saw  or  heard  of  no  matter  how  trivial. 
The  two  M.  D.’s  were  in  collusion  against  me,  but  if  they  had 
won  they  surely  would  have  quarreled  over  the  spoils.  The 
matron  thought  the  conspirators  would  succeed  and  as  they 
guaranteed  her  position  she  sided  with  them.  There  was  also  a 
poor,  little,  futile  stenographer  who  felt  himself  aggrieved 
because  he  had  missed  promotion.  He  had  made  copies  of  some 
private  letters  which  he  had  written  for  me  to  political  friends 
and  tho  they  were  innocent  enough,  he  supposed  they  might  be 
used  for  my  injury.  So  far  as  I  know  every  other  member  of  my 
staff  was  loyal. 

On  the  strength  of  some  letters  written  to  him  by  the  doctor, 
some  telling  of  minor  errors  of  administration  and  some  alleging 
more  serious  faults,  my  Senator  enemy  had  denounced  me  in  the 
Senate  and  demanded  an  investigation.  A  file  of  charges  was 
prepared  and  I  was  ordered  to  appear  at  the  State  House  to  be 
investigated.  The  scheme  was  to  conduct  a  quiet  enquiry  in  a 
committee  room  at  the  Capitol  a  hundred  and  twenty  miles  away 
from  the  institution,  and  since  I  could  not  possibly  bring  down 
many  witnesses  for  the  defense  to  make  a  show  of  listening  to 
.  /  what  I  could  say  on  my  own  behalf  and  get  my  head. 

I  had  shown  the  charges  to  a  friendly  Senator,  a  man  of 
much  legislative  experience  and  influence  but  on  the  minority 
side.  He  had  dismissed  them  with  the  emphatic  assertion, 
“Johnson,  they  don’t  amount  to  a  damn,  not  a  damn”.  But  a 


240 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


star  chamber  trial  no  matter  how  futile  the  accusation  was  dan¬ 
gerous. 

With  some  effort  by  my  friends  headed  by  the  Governor  who 
made  an  appeal  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate  for  a  square  deal  for 
me,  a  public  investigation  was  ordered,  to  be  conducted  at  the 
School  where  I  could  summon  all  the  witnesses  I  needed. 

A  committee  of  three  Senators  was  appointed  my  original 
enemy  being  chairman.  A  second  Republican  member  was  a 
worthy  old  physician  from  a  Southern  county,  whom  the  chair¬ 
man  erroneously  supposed  to  be  a  weak-kneed  follower.  The 
Democratic  member  was  a  warm  personal  friend  and  great 
admirer  of  mine.  I  had  won  his  friendship  while  Secretary  of 
the  Board  of  State  Charities,  he  then  being  Sheriff  of  his  county. 
He  was  a  man  of  strong  character  but  with  not  much  tact. 

For  a  while  things  looked  rather  dubious.  My  friends 
insisted  that  I  must  have  legal  counsel  and  not  attempt  as  I  had 
determined  to  conduct  my  own  case.  They  insisted  that  no  one 
could  do  that  well ;  that  witnesses  would  testify  falsely  and  must 
be  cross-examined;  that  they  would  say  mean  things  about  me; 
that  I  would  get  excited,  lose  my  temper  and  give  myself  away. 
One  of  the  charges  was  that  I  had  a  violent  temper,  a  charge  that 
was,  alas,  too  true,  altho  it  was  equally  true  that  I  usually  had 
it  under  control.  Altho  I  did  not  agree  with  the  opinion  of  my 
friends  I  yielded  to  their  judgment  and  engaged  a  leading  lawyer 
of  Fort  Wayne  a  Republican  in  politics  to  represent  me.  He 
was  a  dignified,  elderly  gentleman  with  a  mind  not  quite  so 
agile  as  it  had  been  thirty  years  earlier. 

Legislative  investigations  of  the  kind  are  really  prosecutions, 
sometimes  persecutions.  The  adverse  testimony  is  heard  first 
and  is  answered  if  at  all,  later.  As  the  proceedings  are  interest¬ 
ing  “news”  the  papers  publish  the  unfavorable  material  one  day 
and  the  offsetting  facts  in  a  later  edition.  This  results  unfairly 
if  the  charges  are  false,  because  many  people  form  opinions  on 
the  earlier  statements  and  do  not  always  correct  them  when  the 
refutation  appears.  State  Board  investigations,  as  I  used  to 
conduct  them,  heard  a  charge  and  got  its  answer,  if  there  were 
one,  before  a  second  charge  was  made  so  that  the  attack  and 
the  defense  appeared  in  the  newspaper  together. 


An  Adventure  in  Investigation 


241 


The  Committee  came  to  Fort  Wayne  on  Saturday  evening, 
the  chairman  bringing  in  his  train  two  or  three  lady  friends  to 
whom  the  pick  of  the  institution  jobs  had  been  promised  as  soon 
as  I  should  be  deposed.  The  Sunday  was  a  hectic  one  the  insti¬ 
tution  full  of  barely  repressed  excitement. 

The  hearing  began  on  Monday  morning  and  by  noon  most  of 
the  testimony  supposed  to  be  important  was  in.  The  institution 
doctor  with  his  black  book  which  he  consulted  from  time  to  time, 
was  the  chief  prosecuting  witness  and  he  suffered  rather  severely 
in  cross-examination.  When  the  committee  adjourned  for  lunch 
the  second  Republican  member  said  to  him,  “doctor,  you  can  write 
a  good  letter,  and  you  are  an  interesting  conversationalist,  but 
put  you  on  the  witness  stand  and  you  are  the  poorest  and  weak¬ 
est  witness  I  ever  heard  of”.  To  all  intents  the  investigation  was 
over  then. 

After  the  proceedings,  before  leaving  the  Institution,  this 
same  honest  old  Senator  expressed  his  regret  for  what  had 
occurred  saying  they  had  been  much  deceived,  especially  about 
my  wife  and  her  work  as  Assistant  Superintendent;  that  they 
had  been  told  that  she  had  been  appointed  solely  to  evade  the  law 
which  limited  my  salary,  but  that  what  he  had  seen  had  convinced 
him  that  she  was  a  valuable  member  of  the  staff. 

Several  streaks  of  my  usual  good  luck  came  during  the  trial. 
When  my  lawyer  began  questioning  the  witnesses  I  prompted  him 
with  written  questions  which  the  old  gentleman  did  not  grasp 
quickly.  After  he  had  missed  one  good  point  with  a  witness,  I 
said,  “let  me  ask  him  one”.  The  lawyer  assenting  I  drew  out 
the  answer  I  wanted  which  quite  disposed  of  a  charge,  making  it 
appear  ridiculous.  My  counsel  whispered,  “go  on  with  it”,  and 
from  that  time  until  the  end  of  the  ceremony  I  did  all  the  cross- 
examining,  without  raising  my  voice  or  appearing  to  lose  my 
equanimity.  But  of  course  I  was  winning  and  it  is  easy  to  keep 
your  temper,  even  under  intense  excitement,  when  things  are 
coming  your  way. 

The  doctor’s  testimony  included  the  charge  that  I  wanted 
to  get  rid  of  him ;  the  charge  was  admitted  and  he  was  asked  if 
he  did  not  think  I  had  reason  for  the  desire.  This  he  indig¬ 
nantly  denied  when  he  was  reminded  one  after  the  other  of  sev¬ 
eral  cases  of  children  sent  by  me  to  the  hospital  as  sick  and 


242 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


refused  by  him  as  not  needing  hospital  care,  with  very  serious 
consequences.  He  had  to  admit  the  facts  but  declined  to  answer 
any  more  questions,  declaring  that  he  refused  to  discuss  medical 
matters  with  a  layman.  In  this  he  was  supported  by  the  chair¬ 
man  who  said  the  doctor  was  not  on  trial,  which  was  true. 

One  charge  made  rather  by  inference  than  directly,  was  that 
my  wife’s  position  in  the  Institution  was  really  a  sinecure.  This 
was  rather  well  refuted  in  answering  a  charge  made  by  the  doc¬ 
tor  that  on  one  occasion  some  sour  milk  had  been  sent  to  the 
hospital.  He  gave  this  on  the  word  of  one  of  the  nurses  who  he 
said  had  told  him.  The  nurse  confirmed  the  statement,  but  added 
that  it  was  Mrs.  J ohnson,  who  detected  the  bad  milk  and 
promptly  had  it  replaced  and  that  she  had  told  the  doctor  so. 

The  matron  testified  that  because  of  my  over  economy,  the 
food  supply  was  often  poor  in  quality  and  insufficient  in  quantity. 
Now  I  had  installed  an  elaborate  system  of  dining  reports  which 
gave  the  menu  as  served  for  each  meal  and  had  a  place  for 
remarks  as  to  quality  and  quantity.  These  were  inspected  each 
morning  at  staff  meeting,  at  which  also  detailed  daily  reports  of 
each  division  of  children  and  each  industrial  department  were 
received  and  scanned.  The  dining  room  reports  were  scrutinized 
and  initialed  by  the  matron  and  myself. 

When  the  matron  had  sworn  to  the  charge  she  was  given  a 
year’s  file  of  dining  room  reports,  over  1800  in  all,  five  for  each 
day  from  as  many  dining  rooms,  and  was  asked  to  tell  the  Com¬ 
mittee  what  these  were  and  what  the  initial  M.  E.  O.  (her  own) 
signified.  She  was  then  asked  to  read  some  of  them;  with  evi¬ 
dent  reluctance  she  read  three,  each  having  under  “Remarks” 
the  words  “Quantity  ample”,  “Quality  good”.  But  before  she 
could  be  asked  for  a  fourth  the  second  member  of  the  committee 
exclaimed,  “oh  what’s  the  use  of  wasting  time  on  such  nonsense, 
that  food  is  good  enough  for  anybody”.  This  about  disposed  of 
Mrs.  OrFs  testimony,  anything  else  she  had  said  earlier,  was 
thoroly  discredited. 

Another  charge  which  resulted  very  favorably  for  me  was 
that  of  disrespect  for  the  bodies  of  the  dead.  In  a  large  insti¬ 
tution  for  defectives  deaths  are  not  infrequent.  I  always  con¬ 
ducted  funerals  myself  and  used  a  simple,  but  appropriate, 
service  designed  to  make  the  idea  of  death  not  dreadful  but 


An  Adventure  in  Investigation 


243 


rather  beautiful  to  the  feeble-minded,  many  of  whom  have  not 
much  else  to  look  forward  to.  After  one  such  interment,  a  girl 
who  was  not  feeble-minded  but  paralytic,  said  to  Mrs.  Johnson, 
“I  have  always  wanted,  when  I  die,  to  be  buried  beside  my 
mother  in  Crown  Hill,  but  now  I  don’t,  I  would  like  to  be  buried 
here  beside  Maggie”. 

One  of  the  doctor’s  terrible  charges  was  that  I  doubted  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  This  was  thought  to  strengthen  that 
of  disrespect  for  the  dead.  As  is  often  the  case  with  a  trumped 
up  charge  there  was  a  trifling  fact  behind  this  one.  Through  an 
employee’s  neglect,  the  rough  box,  to  contain  the  casket,  had 
not  been  prepared  in  one  case,  and  when  the  coffin  was  laid  in 
the  grave  it  was  merely  covered  by  some  boards  hastily  assembled 
from  the  carpenter’s  shop.  The  witness  summoned  was  John 
Conklin,  a  moron  who  had  been  the  bosom  friend  of  Howard 
Crouch  the  boy  whose  interment  was  in  question,  John  told  of 
the  absence  of  the  rough  box. 

Before  the  cross  examination  I  whispered  to  a  friendly 
reporter,  “take  this  in  full,  it  will  make  a  good  story  for  the 
News”.  Then  I  said  “ J ohn,  do  you  remember  Howard’s  funeral  ?” 
— “Yes  Sir”. — “Where  did  it  begin?” — “Why  where  it  always 
does,  in  the  chapel.” — “Who  was  there?” — “All  of  us.” — “What 
clothes  did  vou  wear?” — “Whv  our  Sunday  clothes  of  course.” — 

c/  %J 

“Tell  the  gentlemen  what  happened.” — “Well  we  sang  and  the 
band  played  and  Mr.  Johnson  talked.” — “What  then?” — “Why 
we  marched  to  God’s  Acre.” — “Did  the  band  go  too?” — “Why 
yes,  it  always  goes  when  we  march.”— “What  happened  at  God’s 
Acre?” — “Why  you  read  the  service  and  prayed  and  we  sang  a 
hymn.” — “What  was  the  last  thing  you  did  there?” — “We  all 
walked  past  the  grave  and  threw  in  a  bit  of  cedar.” — “Do  you 
remember  what  I  told  you  about  the  cedar  in  chapel  on  Sun¬ 
day?” — “Yes,  you  told  us  it  was  to  remember.” — “What  else  did 
I  tell  you?” — “You  said  Howard  had  gone  to  Jesus  and  if  we 
would  be  good  and  kind  like  Howard  was  and  Jesus  was,  we 
would  go  some  day.” — “Thank  you  John,  T’m  glad  you  remember 
so  well.” 

The  Indianapolis  News  had  the  above  verbatim  the  next  day 
and  the  dear  old  ladies  in  the  city  said  they  knew  that  nice  Mr. 
Johnson  was  not  a  man  who  would  show  disrespect  to  the  dead. 


244 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


The  question  of  my  orthodoxy,  which  I  must  admit  was  and  is 
rather  shaky,  was  well  disposed  of  also. 

The  only  charge  which  did  not  disappear  on  a  slight  cross 
examination  was  that  on  one  occasion  I  had  been  too  severe  in 
punishing  a  high-grade  moron  boy  who  had  addressed  some  very 
obscene  language  to  my  little  daughter.  The  boy  was  placed  on 
the  stand  and  told  the  incident  even  repeating  the  language  he 
had  used,  and  the  sympathy  of  the  committee  was  with  me  not 
with  him. 

A  circumstance  that  took  the  spirit  out  of  the  chief  prose¬ 
cutor  was  that  on  the  Monday  evening,  the  House  and  Senate  had 
caucused  in  Indianapolis  on  the  bill  to  take  the  appointing  power 
from;  the  Governor  and  decided  against  it.  This  disposed  of  the 
main  purpose  of  my  persecution,  which  was  to  get  the  jobs.  The 
decision  of  the  caucus  came  to  the  Fort  Wayne  papers  late  at 
night  and  a  reporter  called  the  chairman  out  of  bed  at  two  A.  M. 
to  interview  him.  That  reporter  used  to  entertain  his  newspaper 
friends  with  a  dramatic  account  of  the  Senator  in  his  night  shirt, 
stalking  up  and  down  the  hotel  corridor,  pouring  out  denuncia¬ 
tions  of  the  “damned  white-livered  scoundrels”  i.  e.  his  Repub¬ 
lican  colleagues.  The  next  morning  at  the  concluding  session  of 
the  investigation,  he  was  quite  dull  and  indifferent.  He  was  a 
poor  loser. 

When  the  chairman  gave  in  his  report  which  was  prepared 
for  him  by  Ernest  Bicknell  who  had  attended  the  investigation 
as  a  representative  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  it  was  highly 
complimentary  to  the  general  management.  The  only  censure 
was  an  implied  one  that  I  ought  to  have  dismissed  the  disloyal 
doctor  and  matron  a  year  before.  This  was  soon  remedied  altho 
to  my  mortification  the  Board  bought  off  the  doctor  by  paying 
him  in  full  to  the  end  of  the  year  for  which  they  had  illegally 
appointed  him.  I  begged  them  to  let  me  dispose  of  the  case  by 
simply  warning  him  off  the  grounds,  if  he  attempted  to  continue 
bis  unwelcome  services.  But  they  compromised  with  him  and 
with  their  consciences,  and  wasted  nearly  two  hundred  dollars 
of  the  stated  money. 

The  day  after  the  legislature  adjourned,  after  having  got  the 
old  matron,  whose  capacity  for  mischief  I  feared,  safely  out  of 
the  house,  I  went  to  Indianapolis  on  business.  As  I  entered  the 


An  Adventure  in  Investigation 


245 


State  House  Governor  Mathews  was  seated  in  the  boot-black’s 
chair  in  the  vestibule.  As  soon  as  he  saw  me  he  leaped  from  the 
stand  and  rushed  to  me,  shaking  my  hand  and  slapping  me  on 
the  back,  he  said,  “you  old  rascal,  it  was  a  put  up  job  and  I 
believe  you  put  it  up  yourself  to  get  glory  out  of  it”.  It  was  all 
over,  the  danger  was  past  yet  I  realized  how  grave  it  had  been 
as  I  had  not  until  I  saw  the  Governor’s  exultation  over  the 
victory. 

Many  other  friends  were  equally  pleased.  Dr.  S.  E.  Smith 
wrote  a  letter  of  congratulation  and  added,  “now  you  know  your 
duty  to  those  disloyal  subordinates,  be  sure  you  do  it  and  the 
more  promptly  the  better”. 

The  investigation  and  the  removal  of  the  disloyal  doctor  and 
matron  closed  the  most  difficult  and  trying  eighteen  months  of 
my  life,  and  the  next  six  years  tho  not  free  from  worry  and  over¬ 
work  were  on  the  whole  happy  ones.  The  result  of  the  trial 
disclosed  and  disposed  of  most  of  my  enemies  and  and  gave  me  a 
stronger  position  that  I  had  before.  It  had  also  made,  or  dis¬ 
closed  some  valuable  friends. 


Chapter  Nine 


ADVENTURES  IN  MEDICINE 

As  soon  as  I  was  able  to  get  such  a  physician  as  I  wished,  I 
had  begun  to  use  some  of  the  abundant  material  available  for 
research  which  might  add  to  the  world’s  all  too  scanty  knowledge 
of  mental  defect.  I  had  been  much  impressed  on  a  visit  to  the 
Norristown,  Pa.,  Hospital  for  Insane  a  few  years  previous  with 
their  pathological  laboratory,  and  believed  it  a  duty  to  science 
to  do  similar  work  wherever  the  material  was  available.  The 
bodies  of  some  of  the  children  who  died  were  sent  to  their  homes, 
but  many  had  no  homes,  many  parents  could  not  afford  the 
expense  of  transportation,  so  that  the  remains  must  rest  in  the 
institution  cemeterv.  On  all  of  these,  and  on  some  others  whose 
parents  consented,  autopsies  were  made  especially  of  the  brains 
which  were  carefully  preserved.  A  small  laboratory  was 
equipped  at  the  hospital  with  an  autopsy  room  in  the  basement. 

In  preparing  a  corpse  for  interment  after  an  autopsy,  the 
operators  were  required  to  remove  or  cover  up  as  far  as  possible 
all  traces  of  their  work.  On  one  occasion  an  autopsy  had  been 
held  on  the  body  of  a  little  boy  whose  parents  afterwards 
changed  their  minds  and  wired  to  have  the  body  sent  home. 
With  some  trepidation  this  was  done,  the  body  was  clothed  in  a 
new  suit,  the  hands  were  folded,  a  few  flowers  laid  on  the  breast 
and  the  casket  was  sent  home  with  nothing  said  about  the 
autopsy.  It  was  re  assuring  to  receive  a  letter  from'  the  mother 
thanking  us  for  the  beautiful  way  the  body  of  her  child  had 
been  prepared  for  burial.  The  mother  never  knew  that  her  baby’s 
brain  was  in  a  glass  jar,  nor  that  specimens  of  other  organs 
which  had  disclosed  some  interesting  complications,  were  among 
the  treasures  of  our  little  museum. 

Under  a  state  law  the  Ft.  Wayne  Medical  School  might  claim 
for  use  in  its  dissecting  room,  the  corpse  of  any  inmate  of  the 
institution  which  was  not  taken  away  by  friends.  A  few  years 


(246) 


Adventures  in  Medicine 


247 


earlier  I  had  been  obliged  to  refuse  a  cadaver  to  the  doctor  in 
charge  of  the  dissecting  room  at  the  Medical  School  in  spite  of 
his  legal  claim  to  it.  The  body  was  that  of  a  pretty  and  very 
popular  pupil,  dearly  loved  by  her  moron  companions.  No  matter 
what  precautions  might  be  taken,  the  truth  that  her  body  had 
been  used  for  dissection  at  the  college  would  have  leaked  out 
sooner  or  later  and  the  effect  would  have  been  distressing.  So 
when  the  claim  was  made  I  politely  refused  it,  stating  my  rea¬ 
sons,  which  only  convinced  the  claimant  that  I  was,  as  he 
expressed  it,  “a  darned  old  sentimentalist”.  However  the  claim 
was  waived  and  no  subsequent  one  was  made. 

Most  of  the  leading  physicians  of  the  city  were  members  of 
the  faculty  of  the  Medical  School  and  among  them  I  had  several 
warm  friends,  and  some  rather  bitter  enemies.  Some  of  them 
could  not  forgive  me  because,  as  a  layman,  I  had  presumed  to 
accept  a  job  for  which  they  considered  the  possession  of  a  med¬ 
ical  diploma  to  be  a  positive  pre-requisite. 

On  the  colony  farm  there  was  a  spot  which  could  easily  be 
made  into  a  very  beautiful  cemetery.  The  site  of  the  old  grave¬ 
yard  which  at  one  time  the  children  used  to  refer  to  as  “the 
potato  patch”  but  which  they  had  been  taught  to  call  “God’s 
Acre”,  was  needed  for  building  and  we  determined  to  move  the 
remains  to  a  new  resting  place.  This  was  done  with  care  and 
decency  and  a  little  ceremony  was  made  of  the  re-interment.  The 
old  site  was  of  dry,  gravelly  soil  and  there  was  little  danger  in 
the  transfer,  no  ill  effects  followed. 

In  removing  the  bodies  to  the  new  cemetery,  we  found  that  of 
a  hydrocephalic  girl  with  an  enormous  head.  It  had  been  buried 
in  the  dry  sandy  soil  for  several  years  and  had  become  completely 
mummified,  every  part  was  perfect  and  it  made  a  valuable  patho¬ 
logical  specimen.  There  was  another  unique  example  in  the 
body  of  an  idiot  girl  of  remarkable  apelike  appearance;  tiny 
forehead;  immense  prognathous  jaws;  leg  bones  short  and 
crooked;  arms  nearly  as  long  as  the  legs.  The  Professor  of 
Anatomy  at  Earlham  College,  who  was  an  enthusiastic  evolu¬ 
tionist,  had  vainly  tried  to  get  the  skeleton  of  this  girl  for  his 
museum. 

I  saw  an  opportunity  to  heap  coals  of  fire  on  the  heads  of 
some  of  the  doctors  who  had  done  their  best  to  make  life  miser¬ 
able  for  me  at  one  time. 


248 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


I  was  lucky  enough  at  this  time  to  have  a  physician  who  was* 
as  enthusiastic  about  science  as  I  was.  Under  his  direction  the 
remains  of  the  pithecoid  girl,  who  had  died  of  diphtheria,  were 
carefully  removed  and  thoroly  drenched  in  formaldehyde  and  the 
skeleton  was  sent  to  Gustave  Nolte,  a  famous  expert  at  Rochester, 
N.  Y.,  for  articulation.  He  did  an  admirable  piece  of  work.  The 
skeleton  was  perfect  except  for  one  of  the  phalanges  and  part  of 
a  vertebra,  these  were  replaced  by  wooden  carvings ;  all  the  prin¬ 
cipal  joints  were  hinged;  a  silver  ring  was  set  in  the  skull  and 
the  specimen  was  such  as  to  be  an  ornament  to  any  anatomical 
museum. 

When  the  skeleton  came  I  had  it  and  the  mummy  neatly 
boxed  and  took  them  to  a  staff  meeting  of  the  Medical  School,  pre¬ 
arranged  by  a  member  of  the  faculty  who  was  as  friendly  to  me 
as  the  Dean  was  adverse.  Of  course  the  Dean  of  a  college  must 
protect  and  enhance  the  value  of  his  diplomas,  and  if  we  make 
the  possession  of  the  sheepskin  a  pre-requisite  to  a  good  job  of 
any  kind  that  makes  the  document  worth  more. 

My  friend  introduced  me  to  the  faculty  as  a  sincere  friend 
of  the  School,  mentioning  the  fact  that  my  eldest  daughter  was 
one  of  their  most  promising  students.  Then  I  showed  my  speci¬ 
mens,  explaining  the  mummification  of  the  one  and  the  pithecoid 
appearance  of  the  other  suggesting  its  resemblance  to  the  missing 
link.  I  then  presented  them  to  the  College  for  their  anatomical 
museum,  as  being  the  only  place  where  they  might  be  legally 
deposited,  except  the  little  museum  at  the  institution  where  they 
could  not  be  of  as  much  service  to  scientific  students. 

Then  several  of  the  faculty  made  complimentary  speeches, 
congratulating  the  state  that  a  man  with  so  scientific  a  habit 
of  mind  who  was  also  so  enthusiastic  a  humanitarian,  should  be 
in  charge  of  the  important  institution.  Even  the  Dean  managed 
to  squeeze  out  a  few  kind  words  tho  he  did  not  seem  to  enjoy 
them.  It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  his  enmity  thenceforth 
became  inactive.  On  a  later  occasion  when  some  trouble  threat¬ 
ened  he  remarked,  “oh,  Johnson’s  pretty  smooth  they  can’t  beat 
him,”. 

A  few  weeks  later  I  did  another  thing  to  placate  the  profes¬ 
sion  in  a  fair  and  proper  way.  The  doctor  who  had  tried  hard 
to  get  my  scalp  during  my  investigation  in  1895,  was  now  Pro- 


Adventures  in  Medicine 


249 


fessor  of  Theory  and  Practice  at  the  Medical  School.  Because 
of  his  unfriendly  relations  with  onr  institution  his  students 
were  missing  some  important  clinical  instruction  which  they 
might  have  had  in  our  hospital.  Its  special  value  to  the  student 
who  expects  to  engage  in  general  practice,  over  that  to  be  had 
in  the  usual  public  hospital  was  that  with  us  they  could  see 
the  common  diseases  of  children,  while  in  a  public  hospital  only 
accidents  or  extreme  cases  could  be  studied. 

I  told  my  friend  whose  position  on  the  faculty  was  a  leading 
one,  that  it  was  absurd  to  let  the  students  lose  valuable  clinics 
because  the  Professor  and  I  were  not  friendly,  and  begged  him 
to  assure  his  colleague  that  he  might  bring  his  class  to  our  hos¬ 
pital  without  danger  of  discourtesy.  The  result  was  a  regular 
Saturday  morning  clinic  of  a  kind  which  could  not  be  had  else¬ 
where,  an  advantage  to  the  students  which  they  appreciated 
highly. 

Another  step  towards  harmony  was  when  I  offered  the  college, 
as  a  prize  for  each  graduating  class,  the  position  of  interne  for 
one  year  at  the  Institution  hospital,  with  board  and  a  modest 
stipend.  This  was  heartily  accepted  and  satisfactory  internes 
succeeded  each  other  for  several  years,  two  of  them  in  turn  being 
made  chief  physician  at  the  end  of  their  interneship.  From  the 
time  this  arrangement  was  perfected  there  was  little  trouble  on 
the  medical  side.  But  every  layman  who  has  had  the  arduous 
duty  of  superintending  an  institution  which  must  employ  a  phy¬ 
sician,  knows  that  to  avoid  friction  more  than  merely  a  square 
deal  is  needed.  Tact,  savior  faire,  and  firmness  are  required  in  a 
marked  degree. 

After  the  disloyal  doctor  had  been  bought  off  in  March  1895, 
as  told  in  the  chapter  on  investigation,  I  got  my  Board  to  permit 
me  to  engage  a  full  time  physician,  the  former  one  having  only 
attended  for  two  hours  daily  altho  he  might  be  summoned  when 
needed.  I  determined  to  get  a  woman  for  the  task.  I  believed 
that  it  was  just  as  reasonable  to  employ  a  woman  physician  for 
boys  as  a  man  physician  for  girls;  especially  for  adolescent  moron 
girls  is  this  the  case,  some  of  whom  have  been  known  to  malinger, 
because  they  enjoyed  the  ministrations  of  a  man.  After  the 
woman  doctor  was  installed,  there  were  no  more  malingerers 
among  the  girls  than  among  the  boys. 


250 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


A  lady  of  admirable  qualifications  and  experience  was  secured 
and  the  children  were  more  skillfully  and  far  more  conscien¬ 
tiously  treated  than  ever  before.  One  particular  case  excited 
my  admiration.  It  was  that  of  a  low-grade  idiot  boy  with  a 
disease  of  the  scrotum.  He  had  been  given  up  to  die  by  the 
former  doctor,  but  the  new  one  declared  the  case  was  by  no 
mjeans  fatal  and  merely  required  very  careful  treatment.  She 
gave  the  attention  herself  telling  me  it  was  too  serious  a  case 
to  be  left  even  to  a  trained  nurse,  and  the  poor  creature  got  well. 

It  was  a  matter  of  very  great  regret  to  me  when  differences 
of  opinion  about  administration,  failures  in  tact  and  still  more 
in  frankness  and  certain  peculiarities  of  temperament  which 
could  not  be,  or  were  not,  divined  beforehand,  and  indeed  of 
which  the  lady  herself  was  hardly  conscious,  made  it  necessary 
to  sever  the  connection. 

The  woman  doctor  was  succeeded  by  one  of  the  internes  above 
mentioned,  who  was.  not  only  highly  skilful  but  who  fully  shared 
my  enthusiasm  for  scientific  research.  He  did  excellent  service 
until  tuberculosis  compelled  his  resignation.  By  this  time  at 
the  cost  of  much  worry  and  several  mistakes  I  had  learned 
enough  of  my  trade  to  know  how  to  handle  the  profession  and  I 
had  no  more  serious  trouble  with  the  medical  department. 

Epidemics 

In  an  institution  with  many  hundred  children-inmates,  noth¬ 
ing  is  more  dreaded  than  an  invasion  of  epidemic  disease.  The 
first  of  these  with  which  I  had  to  contend  was  diphtheria.  We 
had  fifty- three  cases  and  three  deaths.  Anti -toxin  had  just  been 
discovered  and  was  still  little  used.  After  the  first  few  cases 
developed  we  were  able  to  secure  a  supply  of  this  invaluable 
remedy  and  with  its  advent  the  disease  was  controlled. 

During  the  second  month  of  my  woman  doctor’s  service  a 
case  of  scarlet  fever  was  brought  in  with  a  new  pupil.  The 
diagnosis  was  prompt  and  accurate,  the  child  quickly  isolated 
and  to  our  gratification  we  did  not  have  a  second  case.  We  had 
a  small  building  near  the  general  hospital  which  had  been  known 
by  the  odious  name  of  “pest  house”.  It  did  not  seem  nearly  so 
objectionable  a  place  when  its  appellation  became  “The  Fever 
Hospital”. 


Adventures  in  Medicine 


251 


A  few  months  later  we  had  a  widespread  epidemic  of  measles, 
fortunately  in  mild  form  with  no  fatalities  and  very  few  serious 
sequelae.  The  disease  spread  rapidly  and  the  hospital  was  soon 
over-filled.  I  opened  a  measles  ward  for  boys  and  one  for  girls 
using  a  dormitory  in  each  wing,  where  we  treated  the  disease  in 
a  sort  of  family  way,  only  asking  the  doctor  for  diagnosis  and 
prescriptions,  choosing  a  few  of  the  most  motherly  attendants 
for  nurses.  The  results  were  fortunate  and  the  disease  ran  its 
course  and  soon  abated. 

As  adjuncts  to  the  hospital  we  had  two  “nurseries”,  one  for 
each  sex.  Here  we  cared  for  children  who  were  not  actually  sick 
but  who  needed  special  diet  and  coddling.  They  stayed  in  the 
nursery  sometimes  for  weeks  sometimes  for  months  or  longer. 
Each  nursery  was  in  charge  of  a  trained  nurse,  who  had  moron 
boys  or  girls  as  “aids”.  In  the  boys’  nursery  was  a  little  para¬ 
lytic  named  Eddie  who  was  in  the  special  care  of  an  aid  named 
Joe.  The  affection  between  the  younger  and  feebler  children  and 
the  aids,  who  are  carefully  selected  for  their  disposition  as  well 
as  their  ability,  is  often  very  deep.  Eddie  took  the  measles  Joe 
did  not,  but  another  nursery-aid  named  Reuben  did.  So  Eddie 
and  Reuben  were  moved  to  the  measles  ward,  and  as  Reuben’s 
attack  was  a  light  one  he  continued  his  services  as  aid  with  the 
children  there. 

When  all  the  children  were  well  and  were  returning  to  their 
usual  places  Joe  came  over  to  take  Eddie  back  to  the  nursery. 
I  went  to  the  measles  ward  to  see  how  the  removal  was  being 
done  and  noticed  Joe  sitting  on  a  bed  with  his  face  in  his  hands, 
in  an  attitude  of  profound  dejection.  Joe  was  such  a  kindly, 
useful  fellow  that  he  was  a  great  favorite  of  mine.  I  sat  down 
beside  him  and  putting  my  arm  over  his  shoulders  asked  what 
was  troubling  him.  He  burst  into  tears  and  between  sobs,  said, 
“Eddie  don’t  love  me  no  more,  he  only  loves  Reuben”.  I  said, 
“Oh,  never  mind  that,  take  Eddie  back,  in  three  days  he  will  love 
you  just  as  much  as  ever”  and  so  it  turned  out.  The  feeble¬ 
minded  are  often  very  affectionate  but  usually  just  as  fickle. 

When  small-pox  occurred  in  town  we  quarantined  the  Institu¬ 
tion  and  vaccinated  all  the  employees  beginning  with  the  Super¬ 
intendent;  and  all  the  children,  the  latter  with  almost  disas¬ 
trous  consequences.  We  kept  out  small  pox,  but  difficult  as  it  is 


252 


Adventures  Amonc  the  Feeble  Minded 


to  keep  normals  from  scratching  their  vaccination  sores  it  is 
impossible  with  feeble-minded  children  and  a  year  later  there 
were  still  many  ugly  ulcers  on  the  children’s  arms.  I  resolved 
that  should  the  danger  threaten  anew,  I  would  depend  on  quar¬ 
antine  and  never  again  indulge  in  wholesale  vaccination. 

When  the  discovery  was  made  that  the  thyroid  gland  controls 
metabolism  the  failure  of  which  produces  cretinism,  Armour  & 
Co.  found  a  better  use  for  some  previously  waste  matter  than 
to  throw  it  into  the  fertilizer  vat.  From  the  thyroid  glands  of 
the  sheep  they  slaughtered  they  began  making  dessicated  thyroid 
extract.  They  offered  me  a  free  supply  in  case  we  had  any 
cretins  on  whom  we  would  like  to  experiment.  Cretins  are  rare 
but  we  had  some  cretinoids,  and  with  the  consent  of  my  physi¬ 
cian  who  doubted  its  value  but  did  not  think  it  would  do  harm, 
I  sent  for  a  free  supply. 

We  decided  to  make  the  first  trial  with  a  little  cretinoid  girl, 
Bessie  Patterson  from  Shelby  county.  She  was  four  years  old 
but  had  never  walked  nor  stood  erect;  very  short  for  her  age; 
enormous  abdomen;  short  thick  limbs;  little  stubby  fingers  not 
two  inches  long;  swollen  lips,  tongue  protruding;  hair  black, 
crisp  and  scanty,  breaking  and  falling  out;  skin  yellow  and 
parchment  like ;  eyes  drawn  like  a  mongoFs ;  and  apparently  com¬ 
plete  mental  hebetude;  a  typical  case  of  cretinism  except  for  the 
goitre  which  was  lacking. 

After  a  few  weeks  use  of  the  extract  we  fancied  we  saw  a  slight 
gain ;  after  three  months  the  improvement  was  marked,  the  abdo¬ 
men  diminished,  the  skin  began  to  clear,  the  child  began  to  grow ; 
in  six  months  she  had  grown  four  inches  and  began  to  stand 
erect;  after  a  year  her  fingers  had  doubled  in  length,  the  crisp 
black  hair  was  replaced  by  silky  brown  locks,  the  mouth  was 
closed,  the  tongue  normal,  she  walked  with  a  tottering  gait,  but 
she  walked.  After  two  years  steady  treatment  she  appeared 
almost  a  normal  child  with  a  pretty  pink  and  white  skin  and 
limbs  almost  slender ;  she  was  going  to  kindergarten  and  playing 
with  a  doll. 

About  that  time  her  sister  who  had  placed  her  in  the  School, 
the  child  being  an  orphan,  came  to  visit  her.  I  wanted  to  watch 
the  effect  on  this  sensible,  middle-aged  woman  of  the  marvelous 
change  in  the  child  and  escorted  her  to  the  girls’  nursery,  a  large 


Adventures  in  Medicine 


253 


room  in  which  ten  or  twelve  girls  were  playing,  Bessie  sitting 
on  a  mat  nursing  a  doll.  I  said,  “do  you  see  you  sister  ?”  She 
looked  around  and  said  “no,  Bessie  is  not  here”.  Then  I  pointed 
to  Bessie  and  calling  to  her  she  came  to  me  walking  still  a  little 
unsteadily.  I  sat  down  beside  the  visitor  and  took  Bessie  in  my 
lap.  Then  the  sister  said,  “no,  Mr.  Johnson  that’s  not  the  child; 
I  came  to  see  Bessie  Patterson  who  came  here  from  Shelby 
county  two  years  ago”.  I  described  Bessie  as  she  had  been  and 
on  her  admitting  the  truth  of  the  description,  I  said  “this  is  the 
same  child”  and  put  her  in  her  arms.  Of  course  she  hugged  and 
cried  over  her;  the  nurse  also  was  wiping  her  eyes  and  I  confess 
my  own  upper  eye  lid  was  not  quite  rigid,  we  had  a  real  moist 
time  all  around  Bessie  looking  on  in  wonder  as  to  what  it  was 
all  about. 

Unfortunately  the  thyroid  extract  does  not  restore  the  gland 
to  its  normal  function  it  merely  replaces  it  for  the  time  being 
so  that  its  use  must  be  continued.  Perhaps  some  day  it  may  be 
possible  to  cure  cretinism  by  implanting  the  thyroid  gland 
directly  from  the  animal.  So  far,  I  believe  experiments  of  this 
kind  have  been  unsuccessful. 

Dentistry  for  the  Feeble-Minded 

Defective  children  even  more  often  than  normals  suffer  with 
defective  teeth.  For  some  years  it  was  the  practice  to  send  a 
child  who  needed  dentistry  to  a  city  office  where  the  work  was 
done  at  a  reduced  rate.  This  meant  that  as  a  rule  only  extract¬ 
ing  to  relieve  toothache  was  done  and  much  preventive  work  had 
been  neglected. 

After  our  system  of  medical  internes  proved  successful  I 
wrote  to  the  Dean  of  the  College  of  Dental  Surgery  at  Indianap¬ 
olis,  offering  an  interneship  in  dentistry  with  a  modest  stipend 
as  a  prize  for  the  graduate  who  carried  off  highest  honors,  the 
college  to  be  responsible  for  skill  and  character.  The  interneship 
was  to  be  for  a  minimum  term  of  three  months.  The  first  interne, 
Dr.  Little,  was  highly  satisfactory.  His  minimum  term  stretched 
out  to  half  a  year  during  which  time  the  mouths  of  all  the  chil¬ 
dren  were  put  in  the  best  order  possible.  The  work  was  so 
thoroly  done  that  during  the  next  and  subsequent  years  the 
minimum  of  three  months  was  but  slightly  exceeded. 


254 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


One  year’s  class  at  the  College  was  headed  by  a  woman.  The 
interneship  belonged  to  her  if  she  chose  to  claim  it.  The  Dean 
wrote  to  know  whether  I  would  accept  a  woman  interne.  I  hesi¬ 
tated  just  a  moment  because  I  had  been  severely  criticised  when 
I  appointed  a  woman  physician  and  I  did  not  want  to  be  accused 
of  the  dreadful  crime  of  feminism.  However  I  stuck  to  my  prin¬ 
ciple  of  believing  that  the  opportunities  of  life  rightly  belong  to 
women  equally  with  men  and  I  told  the  Dean  that  as  our  bargain 
threw  all  the  responsibility  for  the  character  and  ability  of  the 
interne  upon  him,  I  could  not  justly  decline  to  accept  anyone 
whom  he  would  send.  The  woman  dentist  came  and  did  excellent 
service  and  if  I  was  criticised  it  did  not  hurt  me  for  I  never 
knew  of  it. 

Our  second  interne  Dr.  LeG alley,  who  afterwards  became  the 
leading  dentist  in  an  important  city,  had  a  really  scientific  habit 
of  mind  and  was  a  very  agreeable  member  of  our  staff.  I  was 
preparing  for  the  meeting  at  Orillia,  Ont.  of  the  Association  of 
Medical  Officers  of  Schools  for  the  Feeble  Minded,  and  as  always 
was  ambitious  for  the  reputation  of  our  institution;  more  espe¬ 
cially  because  it  was  with  one  exception  the  only  one  with  a  lay 
superintendent.  It  was  also  the  only  one  employing  a  dental 
interne  and  as  I  fancied  giving  proper  and  adequate  attention  to 
the  teeth  of  all  its  children,  whether  they  were  those  of  wealthy 
parents  who  could  pay  or  of  poor  ones  who  could  not.  Even 
the  low-grade  idiots  had  their  share  of  the  interne’s  services. 

I  wanted  to  make  a  good  report  to  the  Association  on  our 
dental  work  so  I  asked  Dr.  LeGalley,  who  could  not  attend  the 
meeting,  to  assist  me.  This  he  did  by  writing  an  excellent  paper 
for  me  to  read,  on  the  abnormal  mouths  of  the  defectives,  illus¬ 
trating  it  by  twenty-two  plaster  casts  of  vee-shaped,  saddle- 
shaped  and  other  arches,  and  a  variety  of  other  abnormalities. 
This  paper  led  to  a  lively  discussion  in  the  course  of  which  Dr. 
Rogers  of  Minnesota  declared  I  had  an  advantage  over  a  med¬ 
ical  Superintendent  with  my  Board  of  Trustees  when  I  wanted 
to  do  something  new ;  trustees  being  inclined  to  refuse  consent  to 
what  they  were  apt  to  call  “doctors  fads”,  while  my  experiments 
escaped  that  category.  To  this  I  replied  “then  Doctor  you  agree 
with  me  in  thinking  that  it  is  better  for  a  superintendent  not  to 


Adventures  in  Medicine 


255 


be  a  physician”.  But  this  of  course  was  carrying  the  war 
farther  into  Africa  than  he  was  willing  to  go. 

I  attended  the  meetings  of  this  Association  for  many  years 
and  want  to  hear  emphatic  testimony  to  the  fact  that  while  all 
but  one  besides  myself  of  the  regular  members  were  physicians, 
they  treated  me  in  every  respect  as  an  equal  and  even  elected  me, 
a  non-medical  man,  as  president  for  one  year.  Twice  during  my 
term;  in  1894  and  again  in  1903,  they  held  their  meeting  at  the 
Fort  Wayne  institution  and  I  have  rarely  met  a  more  agreeable 
or  cultured  body  of  men  and  women,  for  they  usually  brought 
their  wives  with  them.  While  their  discussions  are  scientific 
and  technical,  the  actual  sessions  are  the  least  valuable  part  of 
the  meetings,  the  social  intercourse  is  quite  as  useful  in  a  pro¬ 
fessional  way  and  very  delightful  otherwise.  I  am  glad  to  num¬ 
ber  many  of  these  devoted  and  competent  men  among  my  list 
of  permanent  friends  and  one  of  the  regrets  I  had  in  leaving  the 
service  was  that  I  should  not  be  able  to  spend  three  or  four  days 
each  year  in  their  company. 


Chapter  Ten 


ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  GOVERNORS 

One  of  the  new  friends  developed  by  the  fierce  attack  of  my 
senatorial  enemy,  in  the  investigation  wherein  he  was  so  signally 
defeated,  was  Mr.  John  M.  Spann,  who  applied  for  appointment 
as  Republican  member  of  the  Board  of  Trustees.  His  desire  to 
serve  was  solely  in  order  to  protect  me  in  my  position  because 
he  had  a  son  in  the  institution  whom  he  wished  to  remain  in  my 
care.  Mr.  Spann  continued  as  trustee  until  his  untimely  death 
and  was  a  faithful  and  valued  friend  as  well  as  trustee;  it  was 
at  his  urgency  that  my  salary  was  increased. 

The  retiring  Republican  member  was  an  elderly  physician 
who  had  been  on  the  Board  since  the  Institution  was  built.  He 
had  been  neutral  when  I  was  attacked  by  men  of  his  party.  The 
Governor  said  that  as  trustee  he  was  in  a  position  to  know  the 
facts ;  if  he  had  known  I  was  to  blame  he  ought  to  have  demanded 
my  resignation  without  waiting  for  an  investigation.  If  on  the 
other  hand,  he  knew  the  persecution  was  unwarranted  he  ought 
to  have  gone  to  work  among  his  political  friends  to  avert  it.  He 
did  neither  and  Governor  Mathews,  who  was  a  fine,  courageous 
gentleman,  perhaps  a  little  old-fashioned,  but  of  a  fashion  of 
which  the  state  might  be  glad  to  have  more,  despised  a  coward 
and  a  Laodicean.  He  said  that  the  reason  for  appointing  trus¬ 
tees  of  both  parties  was  that  there  might  be  one  belonging  to 
either  on  the  inside  knowing  the  facts  so  as  to  avert  futile  inves¬ 
tigations  which  no  matter  how  they  result  are  always  harm¬ 
ful.  The  trustee  had  failed  utterly  in  the  very  thing  he  had  been 
appointed  to  do  and  the  Governor  said  he  would  not  re-appoint 
him  if  he  were  the  last  Republican  left  in  Indiana. 

Mr.  Mathews’  death  eighteen  months  after  his  term  of  office 
ended,  was  a  great  loss  to  me,  I  had  learned  not  only  to  respect 
and  admire,  but  to  love  him.  On  one  occasion  early  in  1898  he 
was  coming  to  Fort  Wayne  on  business.  He  was  keeping  up 


(256) 


Adventures  With  Governors 


257 


some  political  activity  and  was  being  seriously  overworked.  A 
business  friend  who  was  in  Ft.  Wayne  to  meet  Mr.  Mathews,  told 
me  he  was  getting  no  rest  as  he  traveled  over  the  state  and  here 
a  crowd  of  politicians  had  designs  on  him  and  would  keep  him  up 
to  a  late  hour.  He  begged  me  to  help  him  save  the  Governor 
from  his  friends. 

We  went  to  the  station  to  meet  his  train.  I  took  my  carriage 
and  sat  in  it  instructing  the  driver  to  start  quickly  as  soon  as 
he  heard  the  door  slam.  The  friend  met  him  at  the  train,  told 
him  he  had  a  carriage  waiting  and  adroitly  evading  some  enthu¬ 
siastic  politicians,  escorted  him  to  the  vehicle.  Mr.  Mathews 
stepped  inside,  the  friend  slammed  the  door  and  the  driver 
whipped  up  the  horses. 

Mr.  Mathews  was  surprised  and  pleased  to  see  me.  Presently 
he  said  “It  seems  a  long  way  to  the  hotel”.  I  replied,  “Governor, 
you  are  not  going  to  the  hotel,  you  will  stay  with  me  tonight”. 
“But,”  he  said,  “these  people  are  expecting  me,  I  must  not  dis¬ 
appoint  them.”  I  said,  “well,  come  and  have  dinner  first,  we’ll 
settle  that  later”. 

The  dinner  was  a  happy  occasion.  Some  old  battles  were 
fought  over.  Mr.  Mathews  always  greatly  admired  my  wife,  who 
he  said  was  the  most  mother-like  matron  of  any  he  had  seen  in 
the  institutions.  His  sense  of  duty  to  his  political  friends  gradu¬ 
ally  waned.  After  a  long  talk  and  several  cigars  he  went  to  bed 
early  and  had  the  best  night’s  rest  he  had  enjoyed  for  weeks. 
In  the  morning  after  a  leisurely  breakfast  and  a  stroll  over  the 
grounds,  he  went  to  the  hotel  thanking  me  warmly  for  having 
“kidnapped”  him.  The  next  time  I  saw  my  friend  was  in  the 
casket  at  his  funeral. 

When  the  Republican  James  A.  Mount  succeeded  the  Demo¬ 
crat  Claude  Mathews  in  1897,  his  first  evidence  of  sincerity  was 
to  re-appoint  every  institution  trustee  he  found  in  office  as  their 
terms  expired,  except  one  who  died,  one  who  left  the  state  and 
one  who  declined.  Mathews  had  complied  in  spirit  as  well  as 
in  letter  with  the  law  requiring  non-  (or  rather  bi-)  partisan 
Boards.  He  might  have  chosen  strong  men  of  his  own  and  weak 
kneed  trucklers  of  the  other  party;  but  he  chose  the  best  he 
could  find  of  both,  he  gave  the  law  a  fair  chance. 


258 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


Speaking  of  this  law  whose  intent  was  to  avoid  political 
interference  with  the  institutions,  Mount  said  to  me,  “Mathews 
drove  the  nails  and  I  have  clinched  them  ;  you  will  never  see 
political  meddling  with  the  institutions  again”.  He  was  opti¬ 
mistic  yet  on  the  whole  he  spoke  the  truth.  If  there  has  been 
such  meddling  it  has  been  well  camouflaged,  so  it  has  not  been 
seen. 

Governor  Mount’s  first  public  utterance  about  the  benevolent 
institutions,  was  at  the  State  Conference  of  Charities.  It  was 
heard  with  some  trepidation.  He  spoke  strongly  about  economy 
and  demanded  drastic  reform  in  money  spending.  He  was  con¬ 
vinced  that  the  defectives  and  insane  were  costing  the  taxpayers 
a  good  deal  too  much.  This  made  him  rather  unpopular  with 
the  institution  people,  yet  before  the  end  of  his  term  we  not  only 
respected,  but  many  of  us  loved  him. 

It  was  three  years  before  I  could  get  the  new  Governor  to 
visit  the  School,  but  finally  he  came  to  Fort  Wayne  to  spend  a 
day. 

One  of  the  common  errors  into  which  institution  managers 
who  are  successful  with  their  farms  often  are  betraved,  is  to 
show  them  as  tho  they  were  their  chief  pride.  Now  Mount  was 
a  farmer  and  a  real  one  not  an  agriculturist.  He  was  much  inter¬ 
ested  in  Farmers  Institutes,  those  and  country  Sunday  Schools 
were  his  favorite  hobbies.  I  was  proud  of  my  farm  and  prouder 
of  my  brickyard,  but  I  kept  the  Governor  at  the  school  all  morn¬ 
ing.  I  showed  him  the  classes  and  the  workshops  and  got  him 
much  interested  in  the  economic  development  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded.  Knowing  his  interest  in  Sunday  schools,  I  had  all  the 
children  in  the  chapel  and  put  them  thru  the  exercises  just  as  I 
did  every  Sunday  morning :  he  was  pleased  with  the  performance, 
and  told  the  children,  who  were  delighted  to  have  a  talk  from 
the  Governor,  that  he  had  never  seen  a  better  children’s  service. 

At  dinner  Mr.  Mount  said,  “but  what  about  your  farm,  I  have 
heard  so  much  of  it  that  I  want  to  see  it”.  I  assured  him  that  he 
should  be  satisfied.  After  dinner  the  buggy  with  a  pair  of,  for¬ 
merly,  runaway  ponies  was  hitched  up.  The  Governor  admired 
the  team  and  was  pleased  with  my  story  of  its  purchase  for  a 
song  and  of  my  re-education  of  the  ponies  whose  behavior  had 
frightened  their  former  owner  into  the  sacrifice. 


Adventures  With  Governors 


259 


As  we  neared  the  farm  gate  Mr.  Mount  said,  “now,  Mr.  John¬ 
son  I  believe  a  state  farm  ought  to  be  the  very  best  in  the  county, 
it  ought  to  lead  the  neighbors”.  As  he  was  shown  the  big  octagon 
barn  and  all  the  sheds  and  was  told  of  the  purchase,  the  lumber¬ 
ing  and  the  economical  building  he  became  more  and  more  inter¬ 
ested.  The  alfalfa  field,  which  happened  to  be  the  first  success¬ 
ful  one  in  that  part  of  Indiana,  was  about  ready  for  its  third 
cutting  for  the  season  and  was  praised.  I  told  him  of  our  method 
of  handling  the  manure,  which  he  at  first  thought  was  good  for 
us  because  we  had  plenty  of  cheap  labor  but  then  admitted  it 
was  really  a  labor  saving  device.  He  approved  our  crop  rotation, 
use  of  ensilage,  (then  not  very  usual)  and  other  farm  plans. 
Concerning  several  of  our  methods  he  admitted  that  he  had  heard 
ot  them  at  Farmers’  Institutes  as  valuable  innovations,  but  had 
not  seen  them  in  practice  before.  He  asked  to  see  our  hog-yard 
which  he  said  Dr.  Hurty,  the  secretary  of  the  State  Board  of 
Health,  had  described  at  a  Farmers’  Institute  as  the  most  sani¬ 
tary  in  the  state. 

On  our  way  to  the  brick  yard  I  drove  over  the  big  pasture  that 
the  Governor  might  see  and  admire  our  herd.  As  I  told  him  of 
the  way  we  had  built  up  a  fine  grade-herd  out  of  a  bunch  of 
scrubs  by  the  use  of  pure  bred  bulls  and  careful  breeding,  he 
enquired  with  a  shade  of  criticism  in  his  tone,  “but  what  did  you 
do  with  the  culls?”  When  I  answered  that  “we  ate  them”;  and 
explained  that  long,  slow  cooking  makes  the  toughest  beef  tender, 
he  laughed  heartily. 

At  the  brick  yard  again  he  was  deeply  interested.  When  he 
expressed  doubt  that  the  work  he  saw  was  really  being  done  by 
feeble-minded  boys,  he  was  introduced  to  a  few  of  them.  They 
were  wonderfully  impressed  at  meeting  and  shaking  hands  with 
the  Governor  and  tried  to  show  off  a  bit.  After  listening  to  their 
artless,  childish  talk,  he  said,  “why  they  are  idiots”.  This  gave 
me  the  opportunity  of  teaching  the  chief  executive  of  the  state 
the  difference  between  idiots  and  imbeciles, — we  did  not  have  the 
term  “moron”  in  those  days.  As  we  drove  away  from  the  yard 
he  said  with  much  feeling  “I  would  give  a  thousand  dollars  if 
I  could  make  each  citizen  of  Indiana  see  what  you  have  shown 
me  today”. 


260  Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 

After  the  brick  yard  we  returned  to  the  barn  in  time  for  the 
afternoon’s  milking.  The  Governor  drank  a  glass  of  freshly- 
drawn  ice-cold  milk  as  it  came  over  the  aerator  and  cooler,  which 
was  a  new  device  then  and  one  he  had  not  seen  before.  He  praised 
the  white  milking  suits  and  caps  which  we  made  the  milkers 
wear  as  a  standing  object-lesson  in  cleanliness.  He  was  particu¬ 
larly  pleased  when  he  noticed  two  calves  following  the  boy  who 
fed  them  around  the  yard;  and  when  he  saw  the  herd  bull  har¬ 
nessed  to  a  cart,  hauling  the  green  feed  for  the  cows,  he  said 
“you  make  the  old  fellow  haul  the  food  for  his  harem”.  He  came 
away  the  most  enthusiastic  farmer  Governor  who  ever  inspected 
one  of  the  state’s  farms. 

From  that  visit  to  the  end  of  his  term  Governor  Mount  was 
a  staunch  friend  and  in  his  farewell  message  to  the  legislature 
of  1901  he  praised  my  administration  and  said  my  salary  ought 
to  be  increased,  which  was  some  commendation  coming  from  a 
republican  governor  about  a  democratic  official. 

Ths  last  interview  I  had  with  my  governor  friend  was  on  the 
second  day  before  the  end  of  his  term.  The  Industrial  School 
for  Boys  needed  a  new  superintendent.  Knowing  Mr.  Mount’s 
character,  his  sincere  religious  spirit,  his  uncompromising  con¬ 
scientiousness,  his  sense  of  public  duty,  the  trustees  had  con¬ 
ceived  the  idea  that  he  might  be  induced  to  become  the  head  of 
the  important  task  of  making  wayward  boys  into  good  citizens. 
They  imagined  that  I  had  some  influence  with  him  and  begged 
me  to  intercede  for  them. 

I  met  two  of  the  trustees  of  the  Boys’  School  in  Indianapolis 
and  we  called  on  the  Governor,  who  invited  us  to  dinner  at  his 
hotel.  After  the  meal  we  went  to  his  parlor ;  the  trustees  slipped 
away  and  left  the  Governor  and  me  together.  Our  conversation 
naturally  turned  to  the  Boys’  School.  I  spoke  of  the  importance 
of  the  task  and  how  it  was  one  for  which  no  man  was  too  high ; 
even  ex-President  Harrison  might  undertake  so  useful  a  work 
for  his  state  without  condescension.  To  this  Mr.  Mount  heartily 
assented  saying  that  he  felt  it  one  of  the  most  useful  services  any 
citizen  might  render.  Then  I  spoke  of  the  kind  of  superintend¬ 
ent  needed  and  the  difficulty  of  finding  all  the  qualities, — high 
character,  experience  with  men  and  affairs,  executive  ability, 
public  spirit,  and  most  of  all  sincere  love  for  humanity — com¬ 
bined  in  one  man. 


Adventures  With  Governors 


261 


Mr.  Mount  said  that  was  how  he  felt  and  added,  “where  shall 
we  find  such  a  man?”  I  said  , “Governor,  we  have  found  him 
and  his  name  is  James  A.  Mount”.  Then  he  said,  “no,  no,  I  can¬ 
not  do  it,  I  am  tired,  you  cannot  know  how  tired  I  am,  I  have 
had  a  long  and  busy  life ;  now  I  have  done  my  share  of  work  for 
the  state.  My  term  is  over.  I  am  thru  with  politics.  I  am  going 
back  to  my  home  and  farm  which  I  love.  I  shall  take  part  in  no 
public  affairs,  except  the  Farmer’s  Institutes  and  my  Sunday 
Schools.” 

Then  he  told  me  the  story  of  his  early  life  with  its  early  pov¬ 
erty  and  hardships;  how  hard  he  had  worked  for  his  education; 
of  his  early  marriage  to  the  noble  woman  who  had  helped  him 
so  well ;  of  his  army  experience  and  the  disease  while  in  the  field 
when  he  refused  to  be  sent  to  the  hospital  with  the  result  of  the 
loss  of  his  voice  (that  squeaky  voice  at  which  before  I  knew  him 
I  had  laughed,  a  laughter  of  which  his  story  made  me  heartily 
ashamed.);  how  slowly  he  had  worked  up  against  great  odds; 
how  he  had  built  his  farm  out  of  waste  land ;  how  hardly  all  his 
victories  had  been  won  and  ended,  “I  have  earned  peace  and 
rest”.  I  was  answered. 

Just  one  week  later,  the  noble  man,  the  good  soldier,  citizen, 
farmer,  governor,  friend,  had  rest  indeed.  He  died  three  days 
after  the  end  of  his  term,  worn  out  in  the  service  of  his  state; 
and  tho  our  meetings  had  been  few  I  mourned  for  one  of  the  finest 
men  I  had  ever  met  and  one  of  the  truest  friends  ever  a  man  had. 

The  failure  of  an  expected  appropriation  in  1901,  led  to  finan¬ 
cial  complications  and  money  worries  which  had  most  unpleasant 
consequences  and  particularly  to  the  condemnation  of  my  admin¬ 
istration  by  Governor  Durbin,  who  was  a  martinet  in  business 
matters,  and  finally  to  my  resignation.  Certain  laxities  and 
irregularities  had  crept  into  the  state’s  service  in  many  of  the 
institutions,  involving  no  dishonesty  but  a  system  of  make-shift 
and  postponements  from  one  year’s  book  keeping  to  the  next. 
For  instance  altho  the  state’s  fiscal  year  ended  Oct.  Blst,  it  had 
been  customary  to  use  up  the  year’s  maintenance  fund  with  the 
expenses  for  September  which  were  paid  in  October.  Then  the 
expenses  for  October,  paid  in  November,  came  out  of  the  next 
year’s  appropriation.  The  school  at  Fort  Wayne  had  been  doing 
this  for  many  years  with  no  suspicion  of  misappropriation  but 


262 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


it  was  irregular  and  not  lawful  and  Governor  Durbin  deter¬ 
mined  it  must  change. 

Then  the  specific  sums  which  the  Ways  and  Means  Committee 
would  insert  in  the  appropriation  bills  were  sometimes  changed 
in  the  wording  by  the  clerks,  so  that  the  money  could  only  be 
used  by  what  the  Governor  called  “twisting  appropriations”, 
which  he  sternly  condemned.  Especially  after  he  forbade  the 
institution  superintendents  haunting  the  State  House  during  the 
session,  did  these  things  happen.  To  get  one’s  appropriation 
thru  the  committees  and  the  two  houses  without  error  required 
a  degree  of  watchfulness  which  the  trustees  who,  Governor  Dur¬ 
bin  said,  should  do  it,  could  not  or  would  not  exercise.  One 
example  of  an  error  of  the  kind,  results  of  which  were  sternly 
reprimanded  by  the  strict  Governor  will  suffice.  At  the  session 
of  1901,  we  asked  for  $3,000.00  for  a  new  well  and  pumping 
engine  and  $300  for  a  steam  washer.  Both  were  granted  but  the 
clerk  put  it  in  the  bill  as  “Laundry  machinery,  etc. — $3,300.00”. 
The  money  was  used  for  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  requested 
but  the  Governor  when  he  visited  the  plant,  wanted  to  see 
the  $3,300  worth  of  new  laundry  machinery  and  could  not  forgive 
me  who  could  not  show  it. 

There  was  a  statute  forbidding  the  trustees  from  incurring 
any  obligation  in  excess  of  a  granted  appropriation,  which  had 
been  frequently  disregarded.  The  most  conspicuous  instance  of 
this  was  when  the  institution  first  began,  years  before  my  time. 
The  appropriation  for  building  was  $50,000  and  a  clause  in  the 
act  specially  forbade  the  trustees  from  using  this  for  anything 
but  a  complete  structure.  But  they  spent  the  whole  sum  for  the 
administration  center  and  asked  another  appropriation  of 
$189,000.00  two  years  later,  to  finish  what  $50,000  had  begun. 
The  statute  was  sometimes  evaded  by  the  debts  being  contracted 
by  the  superintendents,  who  did  not  present  the  bills  to  the 
trustees  until  the  appropriation  became  available  later.  On  one 
occasion  the  superintendent  who  had  been  my  predecessor  bought 
an  extensive  laundry  plant,  costing  several  thousand  dollars,  the 
bill  for  which  was  not  approved  by  the  trustees  until  an  appro¬ 
priation  could  be  secured  a  year  or  two  later. 

Of  course  these  practices  were  irregular  and  wrong  and  Gov¬ 
ernor  Durbin  who  was  not  only  an  adroit  politician  but  a  highly 


Adventures  With  Governors 


263 


competent  business  man,  very  properly  undertook  to  correct 
them.  And  those  who  had  been  practicing  the  irregularities  had 
to  suffer  condemnation  both  for  their  own  sins  and  those  of  their 
predecessors. 

These  financial  worries  clouded  the  last  two  years  of  my 
service.  For  the  first  time  I  had  an  unsympathetic  Governor 
over  me,  one  to  whom  good  institution  management  did  not  mean 
so  much  the  welfare  of  the  inmates,  nor  the  social  progress  of 
the  state,  as  meticulous  accuracy  in  financial  transactions.  And 
I  would  be  the  last  to  deny  the  importance  of  such  accuracy.  If 
I  were  advising  an  administrator  of  the  public  service  on  finan¬ 
cial  matters,  I  should  lay  the  utmost  stress  on  compliance  with 
the  letter  of  the  law.  I  know  by  bitter  experience  what  comes 
of  anything  else.  But,  when  this  is  the  chief  consideration,  when 
it  leads,  as  so-called  “business  administration”  often  does,  to  the 
neglect  of  the  purposes  of  the  institution;  when  the  financial 
i business  overshadows  the  benevolent  wor'k;  then  it  is  like  paying 
tithes  of  mint,  anise,  and  cummin  and  neglecting  the  weightier 
matters  of  the  law. 

Another  disagreement  between  my  last  Governor  and  me  was 
on  the  general  policy  of  the  state  towards  the  feeble-minded.  I 
believed  the  state  should  care  for  all  or  most  of  them.  My  high¬ 
est  ambition  had  been  to  make  this  possible  by  developing  their 
ability  and  employing  it  profitably.  Governor  Durbin  told  me 
that  the  onus  of  the  defectives,  like  that  of  the  paupers,  should 
be  thrown  on  the  county  governments  not  on  that  of  the  state. 
I  think  it  was  chiefly  this  radical  difference  of  opinion  which 
made  him  unable  to  see  merit  in  my  constructive  work,  and  to 
interpret  my  efforts  as  being  merely  for  the  aggrandizement  of 
an  institution  of  which  I  was  Superintendent. 

The  fact  that  the  Governor  was  a  republican  and  I  a  demo¬ 
crat  had  little  to  do  with  our  differences;  except  that  had  I 
belonged  to  his  party  he  might  have  listened  to  me  with  a  little 
sympathy,  at  least  enough  to  understand  what  my  plans  and 
ambitions  were. 

The  result  of  all  this  was  that  I  realized  I  must  leave  a  work 
which  had  for  so  many  years  wholly  possessed  me  and  in  the 
central  purpose  of  which  as  I  saw  it  I  had  been  successful  far 
beyond  my  early  hopes. 


i 


Chapter  Eleven 

THE  ADVENTURE’S  ENDING 

With  the  inauguration  of  Governor  Durbin  and  his  meticulous 
“business  administration”,  so  different  from  the  warm,  human 
and  statesmanlike  administrations  of  Mathews  and  Mount,  came 
the  beginning  of  the  end  of  my  Adventure  among  the  Feeble- 
Minded.  Mr.  Hackett,  the  first  chairman  of  the  Board  of  Trus¬ 
tees,  who  with  Governor  Mathews  had  induced  me  to  undertake 
the  work  in  1893,  had  moved  to  California,  Mr.  Spann  died  in 
1902.  The  new  trustees  were  men  of  different  caliber. 

There  arose  a  growing  mutual  lack  of  confidence  between  the 
Board  and  myself.  All  the  fine  things  that  were  being  done  began 
to  appear  an  old  story  to  them;  they  seemed  to  realize  neither 
their  value  nor  the  effort  required  to  bring  them  about. 

Institutionism  comes  not  only  to  the  inmates;  in  one  form 
it  often  happens  to  those  who  have  charge  and  very  often  to 
the  trustees.  This  consists  in  valuing  the  “institution”  for 
itself ;  not  merely  nor  chiefly  for  its  purpose  in  the  benefit  of  its 
inmates  and  of  the  state.  I  recognized  this  spirit  as  one  of  the 
dangers  against  which  I  must  guard  and  believe  I  escaped  it 
but  I  noticed  it  often  in  my  Board,  especially  when  it  came  to  a 
question  of  doing  things  in  a  showy  way. 

As  I  look  back  with  the  wisdom  that  comes  of  mature  reflec¬ 
tion  on  things  of  the  past,  I  see  now  that  I  did  stress  economy 
beyond  reason.  The  appropriations  were  always  limited.*  There 
were  so  many  things  that  I  felt  to  be  essential  which  we  could 
not  afford  that  I  resented  expenditures  for  purposes  that  were 
more  ornamental  than  useful.  This  was  a  natural  enough  men¬ 
tal  attitude  and  one  which  I  could  hardly  escape,  possessed  as  I 
was  by  my  overpowering  main  purpose  of  demonstrating  the 

*On  one  occasion  a  prominent  editor  who  was  present  at  a  meeting  of 
the  Ways  and  Means  Committee  when  I  was  presenting  the  needs  of  the 
feeble-minded,  advised  them  to  give  me  all  I  asked  and  then  if  there  was 
any  money  left  to  divide  it  between  the  other  institutions,  because  mine 
was  the  most  important. 


(264) 


The  Adventurers  Ending 


265 


possibility  of  the  self-support  of  the  trained,  imbeciles  as  the  con¬ 
dition  of  their  complete  care  by  the  state.  One  result  of  this 
was  that  the  trustees  and  I  differed  in  opinion  on  the  question 
of  the  right  place  in  which  to  be  economical. 

The  living  quarters  for  myself  and  family  were  in  the  main 
building.  I  had  a  family  of  children  some  of  them  quite  young. 
I  longed  for  the  privacy  and  comfort  of  a  home.  The  trustees 
agreed  that  I  ought  to  have  a  home  on  the  institution  grounds; 
but  while  I  wanted  to  build  a  simple  cottage  for  which  I  could 
have  had  an  appropriation  for  the  asking;  they  would  not  be 
content  with  anything  less  than  a  pretentious  mansion  for  “the 
home  of  the  superintendent  of  a  great  state  institution”.  This 
was  something  that  neither  I  nor  my  wife  with  our  simple  tastes, 
would  have  enjoyed.  The  result  was  that  we  had  neither  the  one 
nor  the  other. 

A  notable  instance  of  difference  of  opinion  on  such  matters 
has  been  mentioned  in  my  account  of  the  purchase  of  land  when 
we  began  the  colony  farm.  The  trustee  who  wanted  to  buy  the 
small  tract  in  front  of  the  institution  thought  of  the  showing 
that  could  be  made  in  ornamental  grounds;  I  wanted  and  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  getting  a  useful  farm  upon  which  I  might  employ  the 
inmates  and  produce  food. 

But  more  important  than  any  differences  of  taste  was  an 
almost  radical  difference  of  opinion  about  the  main  purpose  of 
our  work.  With  all  my  eloquence  and  with  the  actual  results 
which  I  could  show,  I  never  felt  that  I  had  succeeded  in  winning 
the  enthusiasm  of  my  Board  for  the  necessity  of  adequate  train¬ 
ing  and  control  of  all  the  feeble-minded.  I  had  succeeded  in  this 
with  two  successive  Governors  and  so  long  as  I  had  their  influ¬ 
ence  on  my  side  that  had  a  strong  effect  on  the  Board.  But  now 
in  1901  that  advantage  was  lost  and  I  began  to  fear  that  my 
great  experiment  was  never  to  be  adequately  carried  thru. 

I  had  held  the  position  for  nearly  ten  years.  I  had  carried 
out  many  cherished  plans.  I  had  demonstrated  the  validity  of 
the  theory  of  training  and  employment.  It  was  not  my  theory — 
I  had  learned  it  at  the  National  Conference  from  older  experi¬ 
menters — but  I  had  made  it  my  own  and  carried  it  further  than 
most.  The  number  of  inmates  had  increased  from  about  four  hun¬ 
dred  to  nearly  nine  hundred.  While  the  standard  of  care  had 


266 


Adventures  Among  the  Feeble  Minded 


been  maintained  and  in  many  respects  raised;  and  while  the 
actual  expenditure  for  each  “school  child”*  had  increased;  yet 
the  average  per  capita  cost  of  maintenance  for  the  whole  number, 
notwithstanding  steadily  rising  prices;  had  been  reduced  by 
nearly  one-third  chiefly  through  the  use  of  inmates’  labor  dis¬ 
placing  hired  help.  And  the  physical  value  of  the  plant  had  been 
increased  by  many  thousand  dollars  more  than  the  amount  the 
state  had  expended  upon  it. 

Tho  the  years  1901  and  1902  were  prosperous  ones  for  the 
institution,  I  had  lost  some  of  my  old  courage  and  with  it  much 
of  my  energy  and  I  slowly  realized  that  my  time  to  retire  had 
come.  I  was  tired  out  in  mind  and  heart.  I  was  always  fool¬ 
ishly  sensitive  to  the  feelings  of  those  with  whom  I  had  to  deal; 
discouragement  and  lack  of  appreciation  weakened  me  and  the 
constant  draft  on  my  energy  could  no  longer  be  met.  I  discov¬ 
ered  that  a  trusted  employee  upon  whose  honor  and  loyalty  I 
had  depended  was  working  against  me  in  the  hope  of  being  my 
successor.  At  the  same  time  some  serious  family  trouble  came 
upon  me. 

Then  ten  years  is  a  long  time  on  one  job  for  any  man;  most 
of  all  for  one  of  my  habit  of  mind,  I  whose  favorite  poem  of 
Kipling’s  is  his  “Sestina  of  the  Tramp  Royal”.  I  yearned  to  turn 
the  next  page  in  the  book  of  life  maybe  not  so  good  but  different. 
So  early  in  1903  I  handed  my  resignation  to  the  trustees  to  take 
effect  at  their  convenience.  They  held  it  up  until  August  when 
I  was  notified  that  it  would  be  accepted  in  September. 

I  left  the  service  of  the  state  and  her  weakest  children  and 
for  the  time  the  profession  of  social  work,  and  essayed  a  role 
for  which  by  temper,  habit  and  character,  I  was  utterly  unfit, 
that  of  making  money.  The  disastrous  story  of  that  exploit  does 
not  belong  in  a  volume  of  social  adventures.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  when  I  was  called  back  to  the  field  where  I  belong,  I 
promptly  obeyed  the  summons  and  began  two  new  social  adven¬ 
tures  simultaneously,  the  Adventure  of  the  New  York  School  of 
Philanthropy  and  the  high  Adventure  as  paid  secretary  of  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction. 

♦The  children  getting  School  instruction  were  about  one-fourth  of  the 
total  inmates ;  the  others  were  idiots  below  school  grade  and  adult  morons 
and  imbeciles  who  had  graduated  from  the  school  and  were  employed  in 
the  house,  the  shops  and  on  the  farm. 


PART  FOUR 


ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  NATIONAL  CON¬ 
FERENCE  OF  CHARITIES  AND 
CORRECTION 


(276) 


ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  NATIONAL  CONFERENCE  OF 

CHARITIES  AND  CORRECTION 


Chapter  One 

THE  CONFERENCE  AND  SOME  OF  ITS  EARLIER 

METHODS 

The  place  of  our  National  Conference  in  the  world  and  in 
social  work  is  unique.  Twelve  years  ago  I  had  an  opportunity 
of  comparing  it  with  The  International  Congress  of  Public  Relief 
and  Private  Philanthropy  which  before  the  great  war  used  to 
meet  once  in  five  years  in  Europe;  and  I  was  impressed  by  the 
great  superiority,  in  usefulness  and  interest  as  well  as  in  attend¬ 
ance,  of  our  Conference  over  that  assemblage  of  distinguished 
Europeans. 

To  write  the  history  of  the  National  Conference,  though  it 
would  be  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature  of  social  work, 
is  far  too  ambitious  a  project  for  me.  I  shall  not  even  attempt 
it  for  the  period  when  I  was  its  secretary.  I  only  hope  to  tell  of 
some  of  my  own  Conference  adventures,  and  of  the  benefits  it 
brought  to  me  and  to  some  of  my  friends. 

A  bright  newspaper  man  attending  his  first  Conference  said 
that  its  purpose  was  “to  reduce  the  tuition  fees  in  the  School  of 
Experience”.  I  can  think  of  no  better  definition  of  it  than  an 
occasional,  or  post-graduate,  school  of  social  work.  It  was  my 
Alma  Mater;  at  its  meetings  I  acquired  my  education  for  the 
profession  I  had  adopted.  I  learned  not  only  the  general  prin¬ 
ciples  but  many  of  the  methods  appropriate  to  the  different 
departments  of  social  work  which  successively  it  became  my  duty 
to  practice. 

At  the  Conference,  I  learned  the  theories  and  much  of  the 
details  of  organized  charity  which  were  invaluable  to  me  in  Cin¬ 
cinnati  and  in  Chicago.  As  secretary  of  the  Indiana  Board  of 
State  Charities  I  was  guided  by  what  I  had  learned  in  the  same 


(269) 


270 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


great  school.  When  I  undertook  the  care  of  the  feeble-minded 
my  administration  was  based  on  principles  I  had  gained  from 
older,  more  experienced  students  and  I  practiced  many  methods 
I  had  first  heard  of  at  the  Conference.  Of  course  it  was  at  the 
Conference  that  I  was  prepared  for  my  nine  years  work  as  its 
paid  secretary  and  what  happened  the  first  time  I  attended  did 
much  to  establish  me  in  the  profession,  in  which  at  the  time  I 
was  by  no  means  firmly  settled.  My  debt  of  obligation  can  never 
be  paid. 

The  Conference  began  as  a  committee  of  the  American  Social 
Science  Association,  of  which  Frank  B.  Sanborn,  secretary  of 
the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Charities,  was  secretary.  Its  field 
was,  in  effect,  the  social  work  of  the  states  and  the  members  and 
secretaries  of  the  Boards  of  State  Charities  were  its  natural 
clientele.  These  quickly  assumed  control  of  the  committee  and 
detaching  it  from  its  parent  association  gave  it  an  independent 
existence  and  the  offspring  very  soon  far  outgrew  its  parent.* 

The  name  of  the  new  organization  was  derived  from  that  of 
the  state  boards.  In  those  days  they  were  all  called  “Boards  of 
State  Charities”  or  of  “Charities  and  Correction”;  the  modern 
title  they  are  assuming  of  “Boards  of  Public  Welfare”  is  an 
indication  of  a  widening  of  their  horizons,  to  include  more  than 
the  work  of  public  officials  who  deal  with  criminals,  paupers 
and  defectives.  It  is  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  to  enhance 
the  general  public  welfare  is  a  function  of  government.  The 
Conference  has  influenced  this  development  to  a  marked  degree. 

For  many  years  the  state  boards  kept  the  Conference  going. 
There  was  no  membership  fee  but  each  delegate  was  expected  to 
subscribe  for  a  copy  of  the  proceedings.  Each  board  bought  one 
or  two  hundred  copies  annually  for  distribution  in  its  state ;  and 
without  that  support  the  publication  could  not  have  been  made; 
nor  even  with  it  had  it  not  been  for  a  complaisant  publisher  who 
gave  the  Conference  unlimited  credit.  So  very  naturally  from 
the  beginning  there  was  an  unwritten  law  that  no  one  could  be 
elected  president  unless  he  were  a  member  or  secretary  of  a 

♦The  above  is  a  somewhat  generalized  statement  of  the  facts.  Anyone 
wishing  to  know  just  how  and  when  they  occurred  will  find  a  brief 
account  of  them  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Conference  of  1898.  pp.  xvii, 
et..  s eq. 


The  Conference  and  Some  of  Its  Earlier  Methods  271 


state  board.  It  was  not  until  the  21st  Conference,  in  1894,  that 
this  rule  was  rescinded  by  the  election  of  the  president  of  the 
leading  Associated  Charities  of  the  country. 

While  the  state  board  members  did  not  make  any  such  claim, 
it  was  evident  for  many  years  that  they  were  the  Conference. 
They  heartily  welcomed  all  who  would  attend;  but  others  than 
state  board  people  were  courteously  tolerated,  or  at  least  seemed 
of  lower  rank.  The  government  was  a  benevolent  oligarchy ;  part 
of  its  strength  coming  from  the  fact  that  each  ex-president 
became  a  life  member  of  the  Council ;  and  later  of  the  executive 
committee;  the  real  governing  body.  Another  determining  fac¬ 
tor  was  that  all  service  was  volunteer.  It  was  many  years  before 
there  was  even  a  paid  official  reporter  and  editor.  The  first 
secretary  to  receive  a  salary  was  Hastings  Hart,  who  was  chosen 
in  1894,  and  his  stipend  was  merely  nominal  so  that  his  service 
was  practically  unpaid.  Even  in  1904,  when  I  was  elected  sec¬ 
retary,  I  was  presumably  engaged  for  only  one-third  of  my  time 
though  I  actually  gave  a  great  deal  more. 

For  most  of  its  life  the  Conference  had  no  constitution  nor 
by-laws.  There  were  a  few  “Rules  of  Procedure”  but  even  these 
were  not  printed  until  1892,  at  which  time  also  the  plan  of  a 
membership  fee  was  mooted.  The  government  was  by  resolu¬ 
tions,  passed  from  time  to  time  by  the  executive  committee;  and 
by  a  body  of  “unwritten”  or  customary  law.  Any  experienced 
member  who  would  gravely  rise  during  a  debate  on  procedure 
and  say  “the  unwritten  law  is  so  and  so”  usually  had  his  way. 
The  Conference  in  having  no  written  constitution  resembled  the 
British  Empire,  ,  ,  x  .  .  , 

“Where  freedom  slowly  broadens  down 
From  precedent  to  precedent” 

and  like  the  great  Empire,  it  was  a  place 

“Where  girded  round  by  friends  or  foes 
A  man  may  speak  the  thing  he  will.” 

Now  unwritten  laws  are  what  you  remember  and  one  always 
remembers  that  of  which  he  approves.  Of  course  the  man  who 
kept  what  records  there  were,  who  had  a  good  memory,  and  who 
had  attended  the  most  meetings,  had  a  good  chance  to  help  free- 


272 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


dom  broaden  down  so  long  as  he  did  not  try  to  lead  it  down  too 
fast.  When  I  became  paid  secretary,  in  1904,  my  official  posi¬ 
tion  and  my  experience  during  twenty  years  of  regular  attend¬ 
ance,  made  me  the  natural  authority  on  customary  law  and  I 
did  occasionally  revise  the  code  in  the  interest  of  progress.  This 
had  to  be  done  with  caution  and  the  new-made  law  had  to  be  such 
as  to  meet  the  situation  and  promote  harmony.  Once  or  twice 
a  revision  was  made  by  a  quick  decision  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment,  but  my  usual  luck  attended  me  and  I  was  never  once 
called  down. 

One  occasion  of  the  kind  occurred  when  I  had  been  secre¬ 
tary  for  seven  years  and  believed  I  had  won  the  confidence  and 
friendship  of  the  general  body  of  members,  so  that  I  felt  safe  in 
assuming  that  they  would  support  me  in  anything  in  reason. 
An  unwritten  law  required  all  resolutions  to  be  referred  to  a 
committee,  without  debate.  There  was  a  delegate,  an  extreme 
radical,  who  had  a  grudge  against  some  of  the  oldest  and  most 
respectable  (and  wealthy)  members.  He  offered  a  resolution  the 
object  of  which  was  to  stir  up  strife  by  implied  censure  of  impor¬ 
tant  organizations  which  were  represented  at  the  Conference  by 
some  of  its  leading  delegates.  I  tried  to  dissuade  him  and  warned 
him  that  if  I  was  compelled  to  present  it  to  the  meeting  it  would 
be  in  a  way  that  he  would  not  enjoy.  As  he  persisted  I  had  no 
choice  but  to  read  it.  I  prefaced  the  reading  by  reminding  the 
audience  of  the  early  days  when  many  cranks  used  to  appear 
amongst  us  with  all  kinds  of  cranky  resolutions ;  that  such  people 
now  rarely  came  but  that  a  resolution  I  was  obliged  to  read  was 
from  one  of  that  kind.  Then  I  read  it  and  the  president 
announced  its  reference. 

The  next  day  the  gentleman  appeared  along  with  one  of  the 
rare  “stormy  petrels”  of  the  Conference,  who  always  made 
trouble  or  tried  to  do  so.  From  the  floor  they  made  and  seconded 
a  motion  that  “the  remarks  of  the  secretary  in  introducing  the 
resolutions  of  the  previous  day  be  expunged  from  the  record”. 
The  vice-president  who  was  in  the  chair  said  that  this  motion 
must  follow  the  usual  order.  But  I  wanted  to  get  it  disposed  of 
forthwith  and  asserted  that  the  unwritten  law  (which  I  framed 
for  the  occasion)  allowed  the  Conference,  by  unanimous  consent, 
to  take  such  action  as  it  chose,  and  I  therefore  moved  unanimous 


The  Conference  and  Some  of  Its  Earlier  Methods  273 


consent  for  immediate  consideration.  I  added  that  whenever  I 
had  done  anything  I  ought  to  be  sorry  for  I  was  always  willing 
to  be  forgiven  for  it  and  I  therefore  supported  the  resolution. 
The  Conference  laughed  and  unanimously  ordered  the  obnoxious 
remarks  expunged  although  they  were  in  no  danger  of  ever  being 
recorded. 

Only  once  during  my  experience  did  a  president  deliberately 
attempt  revision  of  the  unwritten  law,  and  as  I  did  not  agree 
with  him  and  his  attempt  was  in  the  direction  of  an  infringe¬ 
ment  on  our  democracy  (of  which  we  did  not  have  too  much)  he 
did  not  have  his  way. 

When  the  eager  young  reformers  began  about  seven  years 
ago  to  make  the  Conference  “more  democratic7’,  they  were  actu¬ 
ated  by  the  highest  motives.  But  democracy  however  admirable 
as  a  habit  of  mind,  is  not,  as  thoughtful  people  are  beginning  to 
see,  a  workable  plan  of  government  for  an  assembly  larger  than 
a  New  England  town  meeting  or  a  small  Swiss  canton,  and  is 
especially  ill-suited  to  a  large  and  loosely  knit  organization. 
What  does  work  is  an  oligarchy,  not  a  selfish  one,  but  one  which 
secures  all  that  democracy  hopes  for — that  things  shall  be  done 
in  a  way  to  bring  the  best  results  and  as  far  as  possible  to  please 
the  whole  company. 

A  successful  oligarchy  must  be  benevolent,  wise,  unselfish, 
democratic  in  spirit  and  moderately  progressive.  These  good 
qualities  have  always  been  conspicuous  in  the  National  Confer¬ 
ence  to  those  who  could  or  would  see.  I  love  the  method  of  the 
Quaker’s  business  meetings  where  they  never  count  heads,  but 
when  a  leader  has  been  moved  to  speak,  his  listeners  or  those 
who  have  opinions,  express  them  if  they  are  different  or  if  they 
agree  say  “that  friend  speaks  my  mind”,  and  after  all  have 
spoken  who  are  moved  to  do  so,  the  clerk  announces  the  decision 
by  general  consent.  The  government  of  the  National  Conference, 
for  more  than  forty  years  at  any  rate,  was  by  general  consent. 
That  is  the  best  form  of  government  which  ever  grew.  But  it 
must  grow.  It  cannot  be  made  to  order. 

I  was  once  told  while  I  was  secretary  that  a  clique,  or  inner 
ring,  of  the  executive  committee,  ran  the  whole  affair  disregard¬ 
ing  the  great  majority  of  the  membership;  but  I  silenced  and  I 
think  convinced  the  critic  by  an  analysis  of  the  attendance  at 


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Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


executive  committee  meetings  during  several  years,  which 
showed  such  an  irregularity  and  diversity  of  those  present  as 
quite  disposed  of  the  governing  clique  idea.  I  felt  flattered  that 
the  critical  member  did  not  accuse  me  of  being  “the  clique”  but 
he  evidently  did  not  think  me  guilty. 

For  many  years  the  only  subject  on  which  the  Conference 
divided  was  the  location  of  the  next  meeting.  The  election  of 
president  has  only  twice  in  forty-nine  years  showed  opposing 
nominees,  needing  a  count  of  votes.  In  fact  anything  like  being 
a  “candidate”  was  repugnant  to  Conference  ideals.  If  a  member 
had  “announced  himself”  his  election  would  have  been  impos¬ 
sible.  At  one  meeting  a  gentleman  who  by  force  of  circum¬ 
stances  was  the  logical  man  for  president  for  the  next  year  and 
whose  name  was  under  consideration  by  the  nominating  commit¬ 
tee,  narrowly  escaped  defeat  by  the  action  of  an  injudicious  sup¬ 
porter  who  attempted  some  crude  political  electioneering  on  his 
behalf. 

We  did  count  votes  on  one  occasion  at  Atlantic  City,  on  the 
question  of  dropping  a  man’s  name  from  the  ticket  presented  by 
the  nominating  committee.  He  was  at  the  time  a  conscientious 
objector  in  a  federal  jail.  For  years  he  had  been  a  useful  mem¬ 
ber  and  as  I  believed  his  objection  to  war  really  was  conscien-. 
tious,  I  and  other  liberal  minded  people  tried  to  keep  his  name 
on  the  ticket  but  war  hysteria  was  at  its  height  though  the  war 
was  over  and  our  opponents  prevailed. 

There  were  many  good  points  in  the  old  methods  which  helped 
make  the  Conference  the  wonderfully  useful  thing  it  has  been. 

« 

One  was  a  custom  of  giving  representation  on  the  list  of  officers 
and  committees  to  every  organization  which  sent  delegates  and 
to  as  many  states  as  possible.  Nearly  every  state  had  its  cor¬ 
responding  secretary,  and  “Reports  from  States”  was  a  standing 
committee  of  which  the  general  secretary  was  usually  chairman. 
On  the  general  committees  through  which  the  program  must  be 
presented  each  state  had  to  be  represented  in  proportion  to  the 
number  of  delegates  it  sent. 

The  list  of  committees  was  revised  from  year  to  year ;  in  those 
days  they  were  not  “sections”,  which  are  more  difficult  to  change. 
A  committee  would  report  for  two  or  three  successive  years, 
usually  with  a  new  chairman  each  year ;  and  then  be  dropped  for 


The  Conference  and  Some  of  Its  Earlier  Methods  275 


a  year  or  two,  re-appearing  when  it  might  have  something  new 
to  present.  This  gave  flexibility  to  the  program. 

A  very  few  of  the  committees  reported  every  year;  their 
titles  being  revised  from  time  to  time  as  a  different  phase  of 
their  work  seemed  to  need  emphasis.  The  committee  which  first 
appeared  on  the  program  as  Organization  of  Charities  in 
Cities”  became  one  of  the  most  permanent  under  diverse  names, 
such  as  Organization  of  Charity”,  “Charity  Organization”,  etc. 
In  1901,  it  was  called  “Principles  of  Associated  Charities”  and 
in  1902  it  appeared  as  “Needy  Families  in  Their  Homes”.  Then 
a  new  committee  came  in  called  on  “Neighborhood  Improvement” 
which  had  in  mind  chieflv  the  settlement  work ;  and  shortly 
thereafter,  in  1907,  the  two  committees  were  united  under  the 
name  of  “Needy  Families,  Their  Homes  and  Neighborhoods”; 
continuing  under  the  same  or  a  similar  title  until  1917,  when 
“Community  Programs”  took  its  place. 

To  choose  the  committees  which  should  be  asked  to  report,  to 
decide  on  their  precise  titles,  to  select  the  best  available  chair¬ 
man,  to  divide  their  membership  so  as  to  represent  each  state; 
was  the  function  of  a  very  important  business  committee,  that  on 
“Organization  of  the  next  Conference”.  This  had  also  to  nomi¬ 
nate  the  president  and  other  officers  for  the  next  year.  For 
many  years  this  committee  and  another  one  on  “Time  and  Place”, 
were  made  up  of  one  delegate  from  each  state  represented  chosen 
by  those  present  from  that  particular  state.  After  a  time  as 
numbers  grew  this  method,  though  democratic,  was  found  to  be 
clumsy  and  appointment  by  the  chair  was  substituted. 

Continued  efforts  were  made  to  interest  new  people  in  the 
Conference  by  putting  their  names  on  committees,  asking  them 
for  papers  or  to  lead  discussions.  Sometimes  there  were  as 
many  non-members  as  members  on  a  committee.  The  chairman 
of  the  nominating  committee  was  the  hardest  worked  man  except 
the  general  secretary,  during  the  Conference  week.  The  old 
heads  on  the  executive  committee  had  a  knack  of  discovering 
members  who  were  willing  to  work  and  then  keeping  them  busy, 
and  for  several  successive  years  I  held  the  chairmanship  of  the 
committee  on  nominations. 

The  Conference’s  greatest  safe-guard  against  division  and 
friction  has  always  been  its  custom  of  never  dividing  on  any 


276 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


question  but  that  of  the  next  place  of  meeting,  and  not  adopting 
resolutions  except  those  of  courtesy.  No  one  can  demolish  a 
verbal  opponent  by  saying  “The  National  Conference  says  so  and 
so”  because  while  its  platform  is  free,  and  its  members  say  what¬ 
ever  they  please,  the  Conference  does  not  say  anything.  It  is  not 
a  convention.  Its  members  do  not  believe  that  a  count  of  votes 
can  possibly  prove  anything  to  be  right  or  wrong. 

People  who  do  not  understand  the  spirit  of  conference  are 
often  dissatisfied  with  our  methods  as  to  resolutions.  They 
think  we  are  missing  opportunities  of  influence.  They  ask  what’s 
the  use  of  talking  if  we  come  to  no  conclusion,  and  how  can  we 
know  that  we  have  reached  a  conclusion  unless  we  express  it  in 
some  positive  way?  But  the  history  of  the  Conference  has 
abundantly  justified  its  methods.  Its  influence  has  been  nation¬ 
wide.  It  has  helped  to  promote  scores  of  good  “causes”,  as  it 
could  not  have  done  by  endorsing  them  in  resolutions,  which 
might  convey  the  opinion  of  the  greater  number  but  would  leave 
a  sense  of  defeat  with  the  minority.  People  of  widely  different 
opinions  meet  as  friends.  They  find  a  common  ground  upon 
which  both  can  stand;  some  wider  truth  which  includes  the 
partial  one  which  each  upholds,  and  often  their  opinions  grad¬ 
ually  change.  I  have  even  known  them  to  exchange. 

Some  one  appear  with  a  new  theory.  He  gets  the  floor  and  a 
handful  of  people  with  him  and  many  more  opposed  because  his 
theme  is  new.  Next  year  he  comes  again  and  finds  more  adher¬ 
ents  and  perhaps  more  forcible  opposition.  After  a  while,  if 
the  thing  is  right,  he  has  a  majority  on  his  side  and  presently 
everybody  wonders  how  so  sensible  a  proposition  could  ever  have 
been  questioned. 

The  method  of  shelving  resolutions  which  might  cause  dis¬ 
agreement,  or  commit  the  Conference  to  some  policy  upon  which 
it  would  not  have  been  unanimous ;  was  by  referring  them  with¬ 
out  debate  to  a  committee  which  sometimes  reported  them  out 
if  they  were  harmless ;  but  often  let  them  sleep  in  the  chairman’s 
pocket. 

For  many  successive  years  Andrew  Elmore,  a  member  of  the 
Wisconsin  Board  of  State  Charities,  a  charter  member  and 
ex-president  of  the  Conference  was  chairman  of  the  committee 
on  resolutions.  He  was  a  bluff,  hearty  old  man  with  a  great 


The  Conference  and  Some  of  Its  Earlier  Methods  277 


sense  of  humor  and  was  long  one  of  the  most  popular  members. 
Being  American  the  Conference  loves  a  joke,  and  Elmore’s 
reports  were  famous  for  humor  as  well  as  good  common  sense. 
One  resolution  called  on  the  Conference  to  denounce  certain 
crimes  and  proscribe  the  criminals;  Elmore  read  the  resolution 
and  said  the  committee  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  re-enact 
the  Ten  Commandments.  Another  was  directed  against  the  sport 
of  trap-shooting  pigeons  and  declared  it  was  against  the  law ;  the 
committee  referred  the  mover  to  the  prosecuting  attorney  of  his 
county.  A  famous  resolution  referred  to  the  evils  of  adulterated 
spirits;  Mr.  Elmore  reported  “if  there  is  anything  this  sub¬ 
scriber  desires  it  is  that  his  liquor  shall  be  pure”,  but  advised 
the  Conference  not  to  meddle  with  chemical  experiments. 

During  the  first  twenty-three  years  of  its  history  the  settle¬ 
ment  people  avoided  the  Conference;  they  were  first  represented 
by  a  committee  on  the  program  in  1895.  One  man  appointed  on 
this  committee  resigned  from  it  and  from  the  Conference  because, 
as  the  head  of  a  settlement,  he  could  not  have  anything  to  do 
with  an  organization  which  had  the  word  “charities”  in  its  title. 
The  name  repelled  them  because  they  felt,  as  did  many  other 
people,  that  alms  and  charity  are  synonymous;  and  almsgiving 
is  one  of  the  destructive  forces  with  which  the  settlements  have 
to  contend  in  dealing  with  their  poorer  neighbors.  And  it  must 
be  confessed  that  they  were  often  justified.  We  see  too  often  at 
the  Conference  as  in  almost  every  department  of  social  work,  a 
tendency  towards  palliative  dealing  with  the  consequences  of 
evils  which  is  so  much  easier  than  efforts  to  remove  their  causes 
but  which  helps  to  make  possible  the  continuance  of  the  evils 
we  deplore. 

I  believed  when  I  was  president  in  1897,  as  I  do  still  that 
the  settlement  theory,  at  its  best,  is  one  of  the  most  hopeful 
principles  of  social  work.  Now  if  we  judge  at  all  we  should 
always  judge  each  other  by  our  best.  I  was  convinced  that  if 
only  we  people  of  the  Conference  and  those  of  the  settlements 
could  understand  each  other  as  we  were  at  our  best;  and  if  we 
would  forgive  each  other’s  trespasses  committed  when  we  were 
at  our  worst;  there  was  plenty  of  place  for  settlement  workers 
at  the  Conference,  plenty  of  standing  room  on  its  platform  which 
they  might  enjoy  occupying. 


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Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


At  the  Grand  Rapids  Conference  in  1896,  I  was  able  to  get 
in  touch  with  some  leading  settlement  people  and,  in  1897,  being 
as  president  responsible  for  the  program  I  determined  if  possible 
to  get  the  settlements  heartily  in  line.  How  well  I,  and  those 
who  followed  me  and  believed  as  I  did,  succeeded  may  be  seen 
from  the  fact  that  since  the  day  the  head  of  Hull  House  came  to 
Toronto  as  chairman  of  a  committee,  we  have  had  five  of  the 
most  brilliant  and  influential  of  settlement  people  as  presidents 
of  the  Conference;  Jane  Addams,  Graham  Taylor,  Julia  Lathrop, 
Robert  Woods,  and  Allan  Burns,  and  three  of  them  were  actually 
settlement  head-workers  while  they  presided. 

Similar  efforts  with  various  groups  of  social  workers  have 
marked  the  development  of  the  Conference  and  have  been  the 
open  secret  of  its  evolution ;  from  a  rather  close  corporation  of 
people  more  or  less  in  the  public  service  of  their  states;  to  its 
present  position  of  including  every  form  of  work  which  may 
properly  be  called  social.  The  beginning  of  this  evolution,  like 
the  beginning  of  the  profession  of  social  work  itself,  may  fairly 
be  credited  to  those  who  represented  organized  charities.  But 
some  who  began  attending  the  Conference  as  public  officials  have 
greatly  aided  in  the  evolution;  although  others  of  that  class 
have  persistently,  and  sometimes  bitterly,  opposed  the  growth 
and  development  of  the  organization  which  they,  or  others  in 
similar  positions,  created  and  which  therefore  they  thought  they 
owned. 

For  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  Conference  any  slant 
towards  sectionalism  was  scrupulously  avoided.  Only  as  the 
membership  grew  to  unwieldlv  proportions  so  that  meetings 
began  to  lose  their  value  for  discussion  of  any  but  the  most 
general  propositions,  was  any  division  permitted  and  it  was  long 
before  it  was  encouraged.  The  first  of  what  are  now  called  sec¬ 
tion  meetings  and  make  the  largest  part  of  the  program;  were 
held  in  1884,  at  St.  Louis,  by  the  C.  O.  S.  group.  These  continued 
year  by  year  but  we  were  strictly  enjoined  to  call  them  “special 
sessions”  not  “sectional  meetings”.  The  first  printed  program 
of  special  sessions  was  made  at  St.  Paul  by  the  C.  O.  S.  commit¬ 
tee  and  was  unofficial  ;  and  not  until  six  years  later  were  notices 
of  the  special  sessions  admitted  into  the  official  program  of  the 
Conference. 


The  Conference  and  Some  of  Its  Earlier  Methods  279 


The  danger  which  the  conservatives  thought  they  foresaw, 
even  up  to  1892  and  after,  was  that  sections  would  be  popular, 
would  draw  the  largest  audiences,  and  would  presently  create 
independent  Conferences.  I  was  sure  the  conservatives  were 
wrong ;  I  knew  that  the  representatives  of  one  important  group — 
that  concerned  with  juvenile  reformatories — were  at  the  moment 
(1892)  contemplating  the  very  action  that  was  dreaded;  for  the 
reason  that  the  Conference  did  not  and  could  not  give  them  time 
for  their  own  affairs.  As  soon  as  time  was  made  by  setting  aside 
certain  periods  for  special  sessions,  and  allowing  three  or  four 
of  them  to  be  simultaneous  they  agreed  to  remain  with  the  Con¬ 
ference  and  we  actually  held  them  for  several  years  thereafter. 

My  theory  was  to  give  each  committee  one  general  session  of 
the  Conference;  which  every  delegate  would  be  expected  to 
attend;  where  the  group  could  make  its  appeal  to  the  Nation; 
and  then  just  as  many  special  sessions  of  its  own  as  it  desired. 

The  elder  statesmen  feared  we  should  distract  the  attention 
of  the  delegates  by  offering  several  simultaneous  meetings,  so 
that  they  would  be  undecided  which  to  choose  and  compromise 
'  by  choosing  none.  A  well  worn  joke  on  the  subject  was  com¬ 
paring  such  a  program  to  that  of  a  “three  ring  circus”. 

When  the  history  of  the  National  Conference  shall  be  written 
the  events  of  the  meeting  at  Denver  will  make  an  interesting 
chapter.  It  was  here  that  as  secretary  I  succeeded  in  getting  the 
announcements  of  the  special  sessions  admitted  to  the  program 
and  giving  the  groups  all  the  meetings  they  needed. 

I  had  not  then  fully  conceived  the  idea  of  what  the  Confer¬ 
ence  might  grow  to;  a  congress  of  conferences;  to  which  people 
might  come  not  only  as  individuals  but  as  associations;  but  the 
germ  of  the  future  growth  was  there.  When  I  became  full-time 
secretary  I  developed  the  germ  and  succeeded  in  getting  one 
national  body  after  another  to  hold  its  sessions  in  connection 
with  ours,  taking  advantage  of  the  great  gathering  to  win 
recruits  and  make  friends  with  individuals  and  with  Associa¬ 
tions  which  were  germane  to  themselves. 

In  this  development  with  its  vastly  increased  membership 
much  that  was  charming  and  delightful  in  the  early  days  has 
been  lost  but  very  much  more  has  been  gained.  To  one  who  as  I 
do  expects  (though  he  does  not  hope  to  live  to  see  it)  social 


280 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


progress  of  a  variety  and  amount  that  will  make  all  we  have 
done  in  forty  years  seem  insignificant,  the  prospect  is  very  hope¬ 
ful.  Some  day  social  work  will  be  so  harmonized,  so  co-operative, 
that  all  competition  and  jealousy  will  vanish.  Some  day  not  only 
men  but  associations  of  men ;  even  great  National  organizations ; 
will  “look  not  every  man  on  his  own  things  but  every  man  also 
on  the  things  of  others”.  More  and  more  we  shall  do  social  work 
socially,  as  individuals  and  as  associations.  When  that  good, 
time  comes  the  National  Conference  will  have  done  much  to  make 
it  possible. 


Chapter  Two 


MY  EARLY  CONFERENCES  1884-1889 

The  first  Conference  I  attended  was  at  St.  Louis  in  October 
1884.  Nearly  all  the  fine  people  I  met  there  have  retired  from 
social  work  and  most  of  them  have  gone  behind  the  veil  and 
joined  the  great  majority.  Two  choice  spirits  among  them  are 
still  in  my  old  age  among  the  most  valued  of  my  long  list  of 
friends.  One  is  Hastings  H.  Hart,  known  to  every  social  worker. 
He  is  the  oldest,  living  ex-president  of  the  Conference,  (oldest 
in  date  of  service,  I  rank  him  in  years)  ;  having  presided  in  1898, 
four  years  before  my  term.  The  other  friend  is  Zilpha  Drew 
Smith  who  was  for  many  years  secretary  of  what  everybody  who 
knows  thinks  the  best  Associated  Charities  there  ever  was,  that 
of  Boston. 

The  opening  meeting  of  the  Conference  was  on  Saturday 
evening.  I  arrived  in  St.  Louis  at  noon,  found  the  headquarters 
and  registered.  Then  ascertaining  that  the  president  was  at  the 
Lindel  Hotel,  in  my  simplicity  I  thought  the  courteous  thing  to 
do  was  to  pay  my  respects  to  him.  I  sent  up  my  card  was 
ushered  into  a  room  and  four  dignified  looking  gentlemen  rose 
to  their  feet.  The  card  was  handed  to  Mr.  Letchworth,  and  I 
told  him  I  represented  the  Associated  Charities  of  Cincinnati. 
The  four  gentlemen  stood  waiting,  looking,  though  not  saying, 
“well,  what  about  it?  what  do  you  want?’’  I  did  not  want  any¬ 
thing.  I  was  merely  doing  what  I  thought  was  the  polite  thing. 
But  it  was  not  what  they  were  looking  for  and  I  hastily 
retreated,  chilled,  embarrassed,  humiliated.  They  did  not  mean 
to  humiliate  me  and  were  not  conscious  that  they  had  done  so 
I  think  they  were  even  a  trifle  perplexed  by  my  call.  They  were 
good  men,  but  it  had  not  occurred  to  them  to  be  good  fellows. 
Thirteen  years  later  when  I  became  president  I  got  even  with 
them  in  an  interesting  way. 


(281) 


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Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


One  of  the  defects  of  the  Conference,  even  in  the  old  days 
when  it  was  not  a  tenth  of  its  present  size,  was  a  certain  lack  of 
sociability.  The  common  folk  were  sociable  enough  among  them¬ 
selves,  but  there  was  always  an  inner  circle,  a  group  of  elder 
statesmen,  who  not  so  much  held  aloof — they  always  spoke  pleas¬ 
antly  if  spoken  to ;  they  were  really  good  hearted  men — but  made 
little  effort  to  meet  and  greet  newcomers  except  perhaps  new 
members  of  state  boards  or  similarly  dignified  people. 

There  was  always  a  headquarters  hotel  at  which  the  president 
and  all  the  elite  stayed;  with  the  “president’s  table”,  where  a 
few  of  the  higher  officials  were  seated  and  to  which  any  spe¬ 
cially  distinguished  stranger  would  be  invited.  But  hundreds  of 
shy,  modest  first-comers  never  met  the  president  socially  nor  saw 
him  except  at  a  distance. 

My  getting  even  with  Mr.  Letchworth  for  which  I  had  waited 
thirteen  years  was  as  follows:  the  Conference  met  at  Toronto; 
the  headquarters  were  at  the  Rossin  House,  an  American  plan 
hotel;  I  had  a  room  with  a  parlor  for  myself  and  wife.  The 
dining-room  had  two  doors  one  of  them  opposite  our  parlor. 
For  a  modest  initial  tip,  I  got  the  head  waiter  to  arrange  a  table 
for  twelve  near  the  door,  to  serve  the  meals  as  at  home ;  soup  in 
a  tureen,  meats  carved  but  on  platters;  and  give  me  plenty  of 
service.  My  wife  provided  flowers;  in  those  days  flowers  on  a 
hotel  table  were  rare.  Then  for  each  lunch  and  dinner  we  filled 
the  chairs  by  inviting  Conference  delegates  to  eat  at  the  “presi¬ 
dent’s  table” ;  each  time  getting  two  or  three  of  the  leading  mem¬ 
bers  to  lend  grace  and  dignity  to  the  occasion,  but  specially 
inviting  any  bashful  new-comers.  For  each  meal  the  guests  gath¬ 
ered  in  our  parlor  and  when  the  waiter  announced  the  service 
we  crossed  the  corridor  to  the  dining  room. 

In  the  course  of  the  week  we  had  entertained  more  than  one 
hundred  different  guests.  Of  course,  we  were  limited  to  those 
staying  at  headquarters  but  there  were  more  than  two  hundred 
and  fifty  to  choose  from.  The  scheme  worked  well  and  had  con¬ 
sequences  which  were  felt  in  the  social  tone  of  the  Conference  for 
years  after.  When  I  became  secretary  in  1904,  I  always  chose, 
if  possible,  an  American  plan  hotel  for  headquarters  as  affording 
at  the  table  the  best  and  easiest  opportunity  of  sociability.  Mr. 
Letchworth  was  not  present  at  Toronto  and  never  knew  how  I 


My  Early  Conferences,  1884-1889 


283 


got  even  with  him;  but  my  revenge  was  my  own  private  affair 
it  did  not  concern  him. 

After  a  few  years  of  regular  attendance  I  found  deep  interest 
in  every  committee’s  work ;  but  my  main  concern  at  the  first  was 
with  the  meetings  devoted  to  charity  organization.  This  was  one 
of  the  newer  committees,  it  was  on  the  program  for  only  the 
second  time.* 

Mr.  Charles  S.  Fairchild,  president  of  the  State  Charities  Aid 
Association  of  New  York,  who  later  was  Secretary  of  the  Treas¬ 
ury  under  Cleveland,  was  chairman.  He  had  a  report  ready  but 
no  papers  nor  assigned  speakers.  The  session  of  Tuesday  morn¬ 
ing  was  to  be  occupied  by  his  subject.  On  Saturday  evening  he 
asked  Zilpha  Smith  and  myself  each  to  write  a  paper  to  read  on 
Tuesday;  Miss  Smith’s  paper  was  on  “Friendly  Visiting”;  mine 
was  on  “The  Danger  to  a  C.  O.  S.  of  Relief  Work”.  Of  course 
they  were  hurried  productions  or  at  least  mine  was.  When  the 
proof  sheets  came  to  me  several  months  later,  I  found  a  para¬ 
graph  which  I  could  not  understand.  No  doubt  it  had  a  mean¬ 
ing  when  I  wrote  it  and  there  may  have  been  a  printer’s  error 
which  clouded  it,  but  I  had  to  cut  it  out. 

Mr.  Fairchild  called  several  meetings  of  the  A.  C.  and  C.  O.  S.f 
people  at  which  he  presided  and  had  me  act  as  secretary.  These 
were  the  very  first  of  the  section  meetings  which  now  make  the 
bulk  of  the  program.  They  were  eagerly  attended  especially  by 
the  new  recruits  to  organized  charity. 

At  the  meetings  of  the  C.  O.  S.  group  I  met  Mr.  E.  I.  Galvin, 
vice-president  of  the  society  in  Chicago,  which  was  then  strug¬ 
gling  for  existence.  The  acquaintance  then  made  led  eighteen 
months  later  to  my  going  to  Chicago  as  secretary.  The  National 
Conference  is  one  of  the  best  places  to  bring  social  workers  and 
those  who  desire  their  services  together. 

It  happened  that  there  were  few  C.  O.  S.  people  present  at 
St.  Louis.  But  the  Conference  leaders  had  discovered  that  the 
new  committee  was  to  be  an  important  and  popular  one;  and 
when  Washington  was  chosen  for  the  next  meeting  that  impor¬ 
tance  was  seen  to  be  greater;  partly  because  its  subject  was  a 

♦The  committee  was  first  appointed  in  1881,  but  it  made  no  report  to 
the  Conference  of  1882. 

fAssociated  Charities  and  Charity  Organization  Society. 


284 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


live  local  topic  for  that  city,  where  there  were  two  competing 
societies  one  called  Associated  Charities  and  one  Charity  Organi¬ 
zation  Society;  and  partly  because  the  Conference  would  attract 
many  people  from  the  part  of  the  country  in  which  most  of  the 
new  societies  were  located. 

Here  came  in  one  of  those  streaks  of  luck  which  have  attended 
me  all  my  life.  It  was  my  first  Conference;  I  was  utterly 
unknown  in  the  world  of  social  work ;  of  the  few  C.  O.  S.  people 
present  most  and  the  brightest  were  women.  If  it  had  been  a 
few  years  later  Zilpha  Smith  would  have  been  made  chairman 
of  the  charity  organization  committee  for  1885,  as  she  actually 
was  for  1901 ;  but  the  conservatives  who  made  the  slate  could  not 
dream  in  1884  of  giving  the  honor  to  a  woman.  The  unwritten 
law  demanded  that  the  chairman  of  a  committee  must  be  present 
when  elected.  Little  known  or  qualified  though  I  was  thanks  to 
Mr.  Fairchild’s  unpreparedness,  I  had  read  a  paper  and  I  seemed 
the  best  available;  so  they  made  me  chairman  of  the  committee 
for  the  next  year. 

During  the  Conference  week  I  visited  the  St.  Louis  Provident 
Association  and  got  my  first  comprehension  of  how  alms-giving 
can  dominate  and  spoil  a  society  which  had  begun  with  prin¬ 
ciples  of  prevention,  co-operation,  and  service.  My  visit  was 
after  I  had  read  my  paper  on  the  dangers  of  relief  work  or  I 
might  well  have  used  the  local  society  as  a  terrible  example. 

Because  the  Conference  met  at  the  Nation’s  capital  everybody 
came  to  Washington  in  1885.  The  attendance  was  double  that 
at  St.  Louis.  The  early  enthusiastic  period  of  charity  organiza¬ 
tion  work  was  at  high  tide.  Most  of  the  new  societies  sent  their 
secretaries  to  the  national  meeting  and  they  were  all  eager  to 
learn  from  and  teach  each  other,  and  I  who  a  year  previous  had 
been  the  most  raw  and  unknown  beginner,  was  now  as  chairman 
of  the  committee,  the  leader  of  the  C.  O.  S.  people  at  the  Con¬ 
ference!!  Luckily  for  me  I  realized  that  the  honor  was  due  to 
my  good  fortune,  not  to  any  special  ability  of  my  own. 

During  the  year  between  the  Conferences  I  had  done  my  best 
in  preparation.  Among  other  things  I  had  secured  from  the 
Boston  society  a  copy  of  its  list  of  correspondents  for  charity 
purposes  which  covered  New  England  well  and  included  many 
places  in  New  York  and  other  states.  To  this  I  had  added  many 


My  Early  Conferences,  1884-1889 


285 


names,  some  representing  organizations,  some  public  officials, 
and  some  private  citizens;  so  I  was  able  to  announce  a  list  of 
more  than  three  hundred  cities  in  each  of  which  a  correspondent 
would  give  at  least  some  information  about  people  who  came 
from  or  desired  to  go  to  them.  This  was  the  beginning  of  that 
united  action  among  the  societies  which  has  had  many  good 
results,  especially  in  dealing  with  applicants  for  transportation. 

Among  the  new  people  Nathaniel  S.  Rosenau  was  the  most 
brilliant.  He  came  as  secretary  of  the  Buffalo  C.  O.  S.  He  had 
been  a  student  of  law  and  coming  under  the  influence  of  Felix 
Adler,  leader  of  the  Ethical  Culture  Movement,  had  been  advised 
by  him  to  enter  social  work  as  a  profession.  He  gave  promise 
of  taking  high  rank.  His  sad  downfall  and  untimely  death  from 
tuberculosis  a  few  years  later  was  one  of  the  tragedies  of  social 
work. 

Rosenau  and  I  worked  together  for  some  years,  both  while  he 
was  with  the  Buffalo  C.  O.  S.  and  afterwards  when  he  became 
general  secretary  of  the  United  Hebrew  Charities  of  New  York. 
At  Washington  we  arranged  a  program  of  special  meetings  for 
the  A.  C.  and  C.  O.  S.  people.  These  were  attended  by  an  eager 
earnest  group.  In  those  days  the  regular  sessions  were  held 
morning,  afternoon  and  evening,  and  time  for  special  meetings 
had  to  be  stolen  from  the  hours  of  rest  or  meals.  The  elder 
statesmen  looked  askance  at  these  meetings;  they  dreaded  decen¬ 
tralization  ;  they  were  afraid  the  Conference  might  split  into  two 
or  more  parts  and  lose  its  influence  with  the  nation. 

Each  morning  at  eight  the  group  of  organized  charity  people 
met,  and  again  at  1 :30.  A  typewritten  program  was  made  with 
a  copy  for  each  attendant;  Rosenau  acted  as  secretary  and  I 
presided.  Among  the  group  were  Zilpha  Smith  of  Boston,  Walk 
of  Philadelphia,  Massey  of  Wilmington,  Del.,  Hutchins  of  Minne¬ 
apolis,  Visher  of  St.  Paul,  Buzelle  of  Brooklyn,  and  Lockwood 
of  Cleveland.  We  felt  that  the  special  meetings  were  to  us  the 
most  valuable  part  of  the  Conference  and  resolved  they  must 
continue;  though  nobody  had  the  slightest  notion  of  what  they 
would  some  day  develop  into.  Rev.  Oscar  Carlton  McCulloch  of 
Indianapolis  came  to  some  of  our  meetings;  he  preached  what 
was  in  effect  the  conference  sermon  that  year.  I  renewed  my 
acquaintance  with  him  made  a  year  before  but  little  did  I  dream 
of  the  close  relations  I  was  to  have  with  him  in  the  future. 


286 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


When  I  was  told  in  St.  Louis  that  I  was  to  be  chairman  of 
the  C.  O.  S.  committee  for  the  next  year,  I  was  asked  to  secure 
the  interest  and  attendance  of  representatives  of  the  big  city 
relief  societies,  such  as  the  Relief  and  Aid  Society  of  Chicago, 
the  Provident  Association  of  Pittsburg  and  others.  These  people 
had  not  seen  that  the  Conference  could  be  of  any  benefit  to  them, 
and  had  not  attended  its  earlier  meetings.  Now  the  charity 
organization  group  had  seen  the  light  and  were  becoming  promi¬ 
nent  but  did  not  recognize  their  kinship  with  the  other  agencies. 
The  relief  people  felt  themselves  slighted  when  they  thought 
about  it  at  all;  and  there  was  some  animosity  between  the  two 
groups. 

I  made  a  determined  effort  to  do  as  I  was  requested.  At  that 
time  as  a  worker  in  associated  charities,  I  hoped  the  big  city 
relief  societies  might  be  induced  to  co-operate  and  to  do  all 
relief -giving,  leaving  us  free  to  develop  service;  later  experience 
showed  me  how  futile  that  hope  was  in  most  cases.  The  history 
of  organized  charity  in  the  Mid-West  would  have  been  very  dif¬ 
ferent  had  the  older  relief  societies  there  taken  the  position 
which  was  adopted  by  the  Boston  Provident  toward  the  A.  C.  of 
that  city. 

I  succeeded  in  getting  two  papers,  one  by  Rev.  Trusdell, 
Superintendent  of  the  Chicago  Relief  and  Aid  Society,  on 
“Organized  Charities”;  and  one  by  Rev.  Donehoo  who  held  a 
similar  position  in  Pittsburgh,  on  “Combined  Efforts  in  Charity 
Work”.  The  two  papers  were  alike  in  showing  that  neither 
author  had  learned  anything  new  about  social  work  for  many 
years.  Although  Trusdell  was  a  member  of  the  Illinois  Board 
of  Public  Charities,  he  had  not  attended  the  National  Confer¬ 
ence  ;  but  he  felt  his  own  importance  and  he  came  to  Washington 
with  a  chip  on  his  shoulder.  He  early  sought  an  interview  with 
me  as  chairman  of  the  committee  and  declared  that  he  proposed 
to  be  heard.  He  said  the  C.  O.  S.  of  Chicago  had  invaded  his 
domain  with  specious  pretenses  and  he  meant  to  make  people 
know  that  they  were  frauds  and  imposters.  He  believed  that 
most  of  the  A.  C.  and  C.  O.  S.  people  everywhere  were  four- 
flushers,  impudently  posing  at  the  Conference  as  the  only  char¬ 
itable  societies  worth  attention.  I  assured  him  that  he  should 
have  his  day  in  court;  that  the  Conference  is  nothing  if  not 


My  Early  Conferences,  1884-1889  287 

impartial;  that  its  most  earnest  wish  is  that  every  side  should 
be  heard.  But  the  old  relief-man  did  not  wish  to  be  placated. 
He  imagined  he  had  a  real  grievance  and  was  spoiling  for  a  fight. 

On  the  Sunday  afternoon  I  invited  Trusdell  to  my  room  to 
meet  Rosenau  of  Buffalo  and  Walk  of  Philadelphia,  and  we  spent 
several  hours  discussing  the  situation.  The  Chicago  man  finally 
agreed  that  in  Philadelphia,  Cincinnati,  and  Buffalo,  it  was 
right  for  C.  O.  S.  to  claim  first  place  but  insisted  that  in  Chicago 
the  field  was  occupied.  We  parted  good  friends  but  his  last  words 
were  that  we  must  remember  he  proposed  to  be  heard. 

The  C.  O.  S.  session  was  set  for  Tuesday  morning.  On  Mon¬ 
day  at  breakfast,  Trusdell  announced  that  he  was  going  to  Chi¬ 
cago  on  the  night  train.  He  said,  “what’s  the  use  of  mV  staying? 
You  fellows  will  all  be  against  me;  I  shall  have  no  backing;  I 
am  going  tonight.”  I  did  my  best  to  reassure  him,  reiterating 
my  promise  of  a  fair  hearing  etc.,  but  I  could  not  persuade  the 
old  gentleman  who  after  all  his  vaporings  was  so  easily  daunted; 
so  I  hurried  to  Mr.  Garrett,  the  president,  and  others  begging 
them  to  induce  him  to  remain  and  read  his  paper  and  under 
their  influence  he  consented. 

When  the  meeting  began  Trusdell  was  as  nervous  as  a  high 
school  valedictorian.  Mr.  Garrett  had  introduced  the  custom 
of  the  chairman  of  each  committee  presiding  at  its  session,  so 
I  held  the  gavel.  Trusdell  begged  me  to  rap  him  down  without 
mercy  if  he  exceeded  his  time  limit  and  was  as  mOek  as  Moses. 
He  did  exceed  bv  fifteen  minutes  but  of  course  I  did  not  call  him 

t / 

down.  His  paper  which  was  to  be  so  incendiary  was  prosy  and 
platitudinous;  it  fell  absolutely  flat;  no  one  said  a  word;  the 
C.  O.  S.  people  did  not  even  feel  themselves  attacked.  It  was 
this  circumstance  which  made  me  so  ready  to  meet  him  when 
we  became  antagonists  in  Chicago  three  years  later;  it  may  have 
been  his  recollection  of  it  which  made  him,  after  the  amalgama¬ 
tion  of  the  two  societies  in  1888,  offer  his  resignation  rather 
than  meet  me  before  our  joint  board  of  directors. 

The  popularity  of  the  committee  and  the  large  attendance  of 
C.  O.  S.  people  which  it  attracted  to  the  Conference  showed  its 
value  to  the  executive  committee  which  has  always  recognized 
success ;  so  the  committee  was  continued  for  another  year,  and  I 
was  re-elected  chairman.  This  was  unusual  then;  it  was  almost 


288  Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 

an  unwritten  law  that  a  committee  chairman  like  the  president 
served  for  only  one  year. 

In  June  1886,  the  Conference  met  at  St.  Paul,  and  as  I  had 
been  re-elected  chairman  of  the  committee  on  C.  O.  S.,  my  Chicago 
directors  cheerfully  agreed  to  send  me  as  a  delegate.  St.  Paul 
was  an  attractive  location  for  the  Mid-West  people  and  as  was 
the  case  at  Washington  everybody  came.  I  had  put  in  a  good 
deal  of  time  and  work  on  the  report  and  the  papers  to  present. 
Rosenau  was  present  and  was  an  invaluable  second  for  every¬ 
thing  I  proposed  and  had  lots  of  good  ideas  of  his  own.  After 
the  opening  meeting  of  the  Conference  we  got  together  at  the 
hotel  and  with  the  help  of  Dr.  Kloman,  who  represented  the 
Baltimore  C.  O.  S.  and  one  other  delegate  whose  name  I  have 
forgotten,  we  arranged  a  program  of  C.  O.  S.  meetings.  It  was 
long  after  midnight  before  it  was  in  shape,  and  the  next  morn¬ 
ing  I  was  waiting  with  it  at  the  door  of  a  printing  office  before 
the  men  came  to  work;  but  we  got  it  into  the  hands  of  the 
C.  O.  S.  people  at  the  first  morning  session  of  the  Conference. 
This  was  the  first  printed  program  of  section  meetings,  or  as  we 
called  them  then,  “special  sessions,”  to  avoid  the  charge  of  fos¬ 
tering  the  sectional  idea. 

Our  meetings  attracted  others  besides  the  C.  O.  S.  people. 
We  had  arranged  an  exhibit  for  which  a  pleasant  room  in  the 
state  house  where  all  the  Conference  meetings  were  held  was 
secured.  Rosenau  showed  a  model  life-size  “creche”  or  day 
nursery,  which  was  a  new  thing  then,  and  a  special  feature  of 
the  Buffalo  C.  O.  S.  I  had  a  display  on  forty  large  cards  30x24 
inches,  of  tickets,  record  cards,  report  blanks,  etc.,  used  by  the 
leading  societies,  with  samples  of  pamphlets  and  circulars.  This 
was  later  sent  from  city  to  city  on  request  as  a  traveling  exhibit 
of  office  methods.  Our  exhibit  was  the  first  thing  of  its  kind 
seen  at  the  Conference.  During  subsequent  years  the  exhibit 
idea  has  been  largely  stressed  particularly  by  representatives 
of  institutions  who  have  often  shown  displays  of  the  work  of  their 
inmates  with  good  effect ;  and  some  graphic  illustrations  of  office 
methods  and  systems  have  been  valuable;  including  a  diagram¬ 
matic  model  of  a  confidential  exchange  which  came  from  Boston 
one  year. 


My  Early  Conferences,,  1884-1889 


289 


At  St.  Paul,  Kosenau  and  I  organized  “The  Council  of  Charity 
Officers”  of  which  he  was  secretary  and  I  president.  Its  pur¬ 
pose  was  to  promote  good  professional  standards  (we  were  even 
then  claiming  to  be  a  profession)  and  incidentally  to  keep  tab 
on  some  other  professionals,  the  traveling  mendicants,  who  at 
that  time  were  numerous  and  adroit.  We  printed  a  weekly  con¬ 
fidential  list  of  these  fraudulent  people  which  was  contributed 
to  by  each  member  and  was  sometimes  very  useful.  Some  of  the 
most  expert  of  the  professionals  found  themselves  confronted  by 
an  advance  knowledge  of  themselves  which  seemed  uncanny.  To 
be  told  the  history  of  their  lives  and  schemes  for  years  past ;  and 
given  twenty-four  hours  to  leave  town  or  be  arrested  for 
vagrancy,  was  very  disquieting.  In  Chicago  I  did  have  two  of 
the  worst  frauds  whom  the  black  list  had  helped  me  to  identify, 
arrested  and  committed  to  the  workhouse;  but  the  net  results 
were  not  satisfactory;  even  less  so  than  my  own  attempts  at 
reforming  such  people  which  always  failed,  partly  because  so 
small  a  proportion  of  the  benevolent  would  co-operate  with  us, 
either  negatively  by  refusing  their  demands  or  positively  by 
assisting  us  to  punish  them. 

At  the  St.  Paul  Conference  there  were  several  new  notes 
struck  in  famous  papers  presented.  One  of  these  was  by  Gov¬ 
ernor  Hoadly  of  Ohio,  on  “The  Pardoning  Power”  which  was  so 
popular  that  the  issue  of  the  proceedings  of  that  year  in  which 
it  was  printed  was  soon  exhausted.  Bishop  Ireland,  of  Minne¬ 
sota,  spoke  on  “The  System  of  Charities  of  the  Catholic  Church” 
and  began  by  denying  the  existence  of  a  system.  Twenty-one 
years  later  when  we  met  in  Minneapolis  the  same  dignitary  now 
Archbishop  Ireland  preached  the  Conference  sermon.  Bishop 
Whipple  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  paid  a  glowing  tribute  to  his 
brethren  of  the  Roman  communion,  on  their  work  of  building 
churches  and  sending  priests  to  civilize  some  rough  settlements. 
The  good  Bishop  also  introduced  to  the  Conference  the  idea  of 
America’s  duty  to  the  immigrant,  and  made  a  pathetic  plea  for 
the  helpless  ones  among  them;  that  they  should  not  be  ruth¬ 
lessly  excluded;  that  when  we  are  receiving  the  sturdy  and  vig¬ 
orous,  we  should  permit  them  to  bring  a  reasonable  proportion 
of  the  weaker  ones  with  them. 


290 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


Rabbi  Sonneschein,  of  St.  Louis,  spoke  as  a  Hungarian  immi¬ 
grant  and  said  his  fellow-countrymen  had  no  reason  of  poverty 
or  lack  of  opportunity  at  home,  for  emigration,  and  that  we  may 
justly  ask  them  why  they  came  as  we  need  not  ask  those  from 
impoverished  lands.  This  speech  moved  me,  as  an  immigrant 
from  England,  to  declare  that  the  same  was  emphatically  true 
about  those  from  the  land  of  my  birth.  My  remarks  aroused  the 
ire  of  Dr.  Gundry,  who  was  also  an  English  immigrant;  and 
when  the  session  was  over  he  accused  me  of  slandering  his  and 
my  fellow  countrymen.  I  replied,  “Doctor,  tell  us  why  you 
came?”  to  which  he  answered  that  his  family  had  lost  money 
and  had  to  make  a  new  start  and  it  was  less  repugnant  to  do 
this  in  new  surroundings.  I  told  him  that  his  reason  was  valid 
and  was  much  the  same  as  my  own.  The  good  doctor  got  over 
his  pique  and  we  became  warm  friends.  Dr.  Gundry  was  an 
apostle  of  the  non-restraint  system  of  caring  for  the  insane.  He 
was  one  of  Ohio’s  prophets  whom  she  stoned ;  he  had  been  highly 
successful  as  superintendent  of  a  state  hospital,  and  was  deposed 
for  purely  political  reasons.  He  then  took  a  similar  position 
in  Maryland,  and  held  it  with  honor  until  his  death.  In  those 
days  in  Ohio  and  many  other  states  which  are  now  more  civil¬ 
ized,  a  change  of  party,  or  even  a  change  of  dominant  faction 
of  the  same  party,  meant  a  clean  sweep  of  all  the  state’s  servants 
on  the  principle  that  their  jobs  were  spoils  and  so  belonged  to 
the  victors. 

It  was  at  this  Conference  that  I  first  met  Clara  Barton,  then 
and  for  long  the  presiding  genius  of  the  Red  Cross,  whose  work 
I  had  first  seen  in  1884,  during  the  flood  relief  in  Cincinnati. 

In  1887,  the  Conference  met  in  Omaha  and  though  the  attend¬ 
ance  was  smaller  than  at  St.  Paul  or  Washington,  the  delegates 
got  much  benefit.  The  program  included  a  good  report  on  state 
boards  of  charities  with  several  papers  and  a  full  discussion 
following.  From  it  I  learned  much  which  was  to  be  useful  to 
me  two  years  later  in  securing  my  appointment  as  secretary  of 
the  Board  of  State  Charities  of  Indiana. 

Charles  D.  Kellogg,  of  the  New  York  C.  O.  S.,  was  chairman 
of  the  committee  on  organized  charities.  He  had  a  good  report 
and  some  useful  papers.  But  the  early  enthusiasm  was  beginning 
to  wane.  One  or  two  special  sessions  were  held,  but  the  lack  of 
a  strong  directing  hand  was  plain. 


My  Early  Conferences,  1884-1889 


291 


At  Omaha  one  distinctly  new  note  was  our  responsibility  to 
the  African  and  Indian  races.  Miss  Alice  Fletcher,  who  had 
lived  among  the  Omahas,  contributed  a  notable  paper  on  allot¬ 
ment  of  land  in  severalty  to  the  Indians.*  Gen.  Armstrong  of 
Hampden  Institute,  and  Frank  B.  Sanborn  of  Massachusetts 
spoke  on  “The  Future  and  the  Education  of  the  Africans”.  In 
1887,  we  were  far  from  the  modern  conception  of  social  work 
and  were  still  hampered  by  old  theories  of  charity;  hence  the 
discussion  of  the  affairs  of  Negroes  and  Indians  was  deemed 
almost  irrelevant;  and  the  committee  on  such  affairs  which 
seemed  likely  to  be  useful  was  dropped  from  the  program  and 
has  not  re  appeared. 

This  was  the  last  Conference  I  attended  in  my  capacity  as 
secretary  of  a  charity  organization  society.  The  meeting  for  1888 
was  at  Buffalo;  but  the  financial  stringency  from  which  the 
C.  O.  S.  of  Chicago  was  suffering,  and  the  heavy  burden  of  work 
I  was  carrying  made  it  seem  advisable  to  stay  away.  In  1889, 
I  had  changed  my  occupation  and  had  entered  on  an  adventure 
even  more  attractive  and  inciting  than  that  of  associated 
charities. 

When  the  Conference  met  in  San  Francisco  in  1889,  I  had 
become  secretary  of  a  board  of  state  charities  so  it  was  all  the 
more  fitting  that  I  should  continue  my  membership.  Our  board 
sent  two  members  besides  myself.  A  special  train  filled  with 
delegates  started  from  Chicago  and  made  a  leisurely  trip  across 
the  Continent;  stopping  for  a  few  hours  in  Denver,  where  we 
were  entertained  for  dinner  and  some  speech-making  by  the  local 
social  workers;  a  day  and  a  night  at  Colorado  Springs;  and  a 
day  at  Salt  Lake.  We  crossed  the  divide  at  Marshall  Pass,  the 
highest  railroad  station  in  the  Kockies,  where  the  train  halted 
long  enough  for  us  to  count  our  heart-beats  as  accelerated  by  the 
altitude.  Seven  days  together  on  the  train  brought  about  a 
companionship  that  had  rarely  been  equalled  since  the  early  days 
when  thirty  or  forty  people  made  up  the  Conference. 

Bishop  Gillespie,  long  the  chairman  of  the  Michigan  Board 
of  Charities,  was  president.  He  was  one  of  the  worthies  of  the 

♦Anyone  who  wishes  to  understand  what  giving  land  to  the  Indians 
in  severalty,  should  do,  or  should  have  done,  for  them  and  for  us,  should 
read  Miss  Fletcher’s  paper  in  the  Proceedings  for  1887,  page  172. 


292 


Adventures  with  ttte  National  Conference 


old  days  {vho  has  passed  over  a  still  greater  divide  than  that  of 
Marshall  Pass.  One  of  the  valued  acquaintanceships  I  made  on 
the  train  was  that  of  Mr.  John  Glenn  who  was  then  president 
of  the  Baltimore  C.  O.  S.  One  of  his  errands  at  San  Francisco 
was  to  invite  the  Conference  to  meet  the  next  year  in  the  Monu¬ 
ment  City  in  which  he  was  successful.  Mr.  Glenn  was  blind  and 
from  him  I  learned  a  true  conception  of  what  our  social  work 
for  the  blind  ought  to  be;  pre-eminently  for  them  it  is  to  help 
them  help  themselves. 

There  was  something  very  delightful  in  the  friendships  we 
made  at  the  National  Conference  in  those  early  days;  before 
the  gathering  got  too  large  for  everybody  to  know  everybody 
else.  The  associates  we  met  there  seemed  more  charming  than 
those  we  saw  during  the  other  fifty-one  weeks  of  the  year,  per¬ 
haps  because,  for  that  one  week,  we  were  all  on  our  best 
behaviors.  We  all  agreed  so  admirably  in  everything  but  opinion. 
And  other  people  also  thought  well  of  us.  During  the  meeting 
at  Atlanta  in  1903,  the  head  waiter  at  the  Piedmont  Hotel,  a 
rather  famous  and  quaint  old  darky,  was  asked  by  one  of  the 
other  guests  who  all  these  people  in  the  dining  room  wearing 
badges  were.  He  replied  “it’s  some  sort  of  a  convention,  sah. 
They  suah  ah  mighty  fine  folks,  sah.  They  don’t  find  no  fault 
with  theirselves.” 

Timothy  Nicholson  was  not  able  to  attend  the  meeting  at  San 
Francisco,  but  he  was  much  interested  in  the  published  proceed¬ 
ings.  It  was  the  custom  in  those  days  to  print  with  the  index  of 
the  volume,  a  list  of  the  speakers  reported  in  it,  with  the  number 
of  the  page  on  which  each  speech  appeared ;  it  was  therefore  very 
easy  to  see  who  had  talked  the  most  frequently.  A  few  days  after 
we  had  received  the  proceedings  for  1889,  Mr.  Nicholson  came 
into  the  state  board  office  and  referred  to  the  fact  that  his  copy 
of  the  proceedings  had  come  and  then  said  “I  see  there  was  one 
man  who  spoke  oftener  than  thee  did.” — I  said  “who  was  that?” 
— he  replied,  “Oscar  McCulloch”.  I  told  him  that  the  fact  of 
our  names  appearing  the  most  frequently;  as  the  reporter  was 
also  the  editor;  merely  meant  that  what  we  said  was  best  worth 
printing.  But  he  thought  that  was  specious. 

At  San  Francisco  there  was  a  group  of  earnest  people  from 
Portland,  Ore.,  who  invited  the  delegates  to  hold  a  supplemen- 


My  Early  Conferences,  1884-1889 


293 


tary  two  days  session  in  that  city.  A  few  of  us  went  and  held 
meetings  on  Saturday  and  Sunday  afternoons  and  evenings.  On 
Sunday  morning  many  of  our  delegates  spoke  in  the  city  churches 
and  on  Monday  we  were  given  an  excursion  on  the  Columbia 
River.  I  spoke  in  the  Unitarian  church  and  was  invited  to  stay 
over  the  week  with  the  Pacific  Coast  Unitarian  Conference, 
which  was  in  session,  and  to  address  that  conference  on  social 
work.  Rev.  T.  L.  Eliot,  pastor  of  the  church,  who  was  the  leader 
in  social  work  in  the  city,  asked  me  to  inspect  their  state  insti¬ 
tutions  at  Salem,  (Oregon  had  no  state  board  of  charities).  I 
later  sent  him  a  fifty  page  report  on  their  prison,  insane  hospital, 
and  the  schools  for  deaf  and  blind. 

A  few  weeks  after  I  had  sent  the  report  from  Indianapolis, 
I  got  a  letter  from  Mr.  Eliot,  inviting  me  to  become  superintend¬ 
ent  of  their  Boys  and  Girls  Aid  Society.  I  answered  that  while 
the  offer  was  attractive  I  had  only  recently  become  secretary 
of  the  Indiana  Board  and  had  begun  much  work  that  would  lose 
its  value  if  I  did  not  finish  it  and  I  could  not  in  honor  desert 
my  post. 

In  about  three  weeks  I  got  a  letter  saying  there  was  no 
hurry  and  asking  how  soon  I  should  consider  it  proper  to  con¬ 
template  a  change.  Then  I  thought  I  would  settle  it.  I  wrote 
that  Mr.  McCulloch  and  I  had  resolved  to  bring  the  National 
Conference  to  Indianapolis  in  May  1891,  and  that  I  must  cer¬ 
tainly  see  that  thru.  A  few  weeks  later  a  third  letter  came  say¬ 
ing  a  year  would  soon  pass  and  he  might  write  again. 

Early  in  1891,  when  I  was  awaiting  with  some  apprehension 
my  first  experience  with  a  legislative  assembly,  and  fully  expect¬ 
ing  an  attack  from  disgruntled  politicians,  which  might  end  our 
board’s  usefulness;*  came  a  letter  saying  the  year  was  over  and 
would  I  now  consider  the  position  if  so  at  what  salary.  The 
call  was  attractive,  I  liked  Portland;  and  the  opportunities 
Oregon  might  offer  for  my  three  boys  about  whose  careers  I  was 
anxious,  seemed  specially  good.  The  glamour  of  the  Far  West 
attracts  those  who  love  adventure  as  I  do.  So  I  offered  to  take 
the  position  if  they  could  make  the  salary  enough  more  than  I 
was  earning  to  offset  the  higher  cost  of  living;  and  would  pay 


♦See  page  97  “The  First  Annual  Report”. 


294 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


my  moving  expenses.  To  this  Mr.  Eliot  agreed.  But  I  added  a 
third  condition — that  when  they  offered  me  the  position  at 
$2500.00,  they  should  say  that  this  was  a  minimum  and  that 
they  would  hope  (not  promise)  to  make  it  $3500.00  when  the 
society  should  be  well  established.  On  this  point  our  difference 
was  final  and  I  stayed  in  Indiana  where  I  belonged. 

I  attended  the  next  Conference  in  a  new  role  for  at  San 
Francisco  I  was  elected  general  secretary  an  honor  I  held  with 
great  satisfaction  (to  myself)  for  four  years.  In  those  days  that 
office  like  all  others  of  the  Conference  was  unpaid,  but  it  brought 
compensations  worth  more  than  money. 


Chapter  Three 


ADVENTURES  AS  SECRETARY 
First  Series/  1890-1893 

I  went  to  Baltimore  in  1890  as  the  secretary  of  the  Confer¬ 
ence.  Perhaps  because  it  was  my  first  year  as  secretary  and  I 
was  enjoying  the  work  and  the  position ;  but  certainly  the  people 
who  came  to  our  meeting  at  Baltimore  seemed  to  me  the  finest 
lot  of  folks  with  whom  I  ever  had  such  intimate  acquaintance. 

Dr.  Albert  G.  Byers,  whose  reputation  as  the  only  secretary 
in  very  many  years  of  the  Ohio  State  Board  of  Charities  was 
nation-wide,  was  president.  He  was  old  and  in  failing  health 
and  he  carried  thru  his  duties  on  his  nerve  not  on  his  bodily 
strength. 

Mr.  Joseph  Cushing  was  chairman  of  the  local  committee 
and  was  a  noble  and  lavish  host.  John  M.  Glenn  was  local  sec¬ 
retary;  he  was  getting  his  first  taste  of  social  work  in  which  he 
holds  a  unique  position  today.  Baltimore  people  lived  up  to 
their  reputation  for  hospitality;  they  not  only  entertained  us, 
both  publicly  and  privately,  but  they  crowded  our  meetings. 
Some  years  afterward  when  I  was  preparing  publicity  for  a  com¬ 
ing  meeting,  I  wrote  to  a  friend  in  Baltimore  with  the  question, 
“what  effect  did  the  Conference  have  on  your  city  and  its  social 
work?”  and  the  answer  was  that  many  good  things  had  hap¬ 
pened  and  in  every  one  of  them  the  initial  impulse  might  be 
traced  to  the  Conference. 

It  was  wonderfully  interesting  to  go  again  to  Baltimore  in 
1915,  after  the  lapse  of  a  quarter  of  a  century;  to  recall  old 
memories  of  great-souled  people  who  had  passed  away  and 
remember  what  they  had  been  to  the  Conference  and  could  be 
no  more.  It  impressed  me  with  the  transitoriness  of  human  life 

♦The  second  and  third  series  in  Chapts.  5  and  6  tell  of  my  work  as 
paid  secretary  which  began  in  September  1904,  and  continued  for  nine 
years. 


(295) 


296 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


and  the  permanence  of  great  and  noble  human  institutions. 
Those  who  had  made  this  splendid  instrument  for  the  promotion 
of  human  welfare  were  forgotten  except  bj  a  few  lingering  sur¬ 
vivors.  But  the  Conference  they  had  helped  to  create  endured; 
stronger;  with  a  more  vigorous  life;  with  many  times  greater 
attendance;  than  in  the  days  when  those  early  leaders  seemed 
essential  to  its  existence. 

Most  of  all  it  was  inspiring  to  see  the  new  leaders  at  the 
front ;  strong  men  and  women  who  had  been  little  children  when 
we  met  before  in  Baltimore ;  braver,  more  hopeful,  more  earnest, 
more  determined  than  those  whose  work  they  were  carrying  on 
to  heights  undreamed  of  in  the  olden  days. 

I  know  nothing  that  makes  me  feel  more  optimistic  than  does 
the  transformation  of  the  National  Conference;  from  a  group  of 
people  chiefly  concerned  with  various  kinds  of  relief,  correction, 
punishment;  at  best  amelioration;  to  a  body  of  social  workers 
whose  devotion  is  not  merely  to  prevention;  still  less  to  relief; 
but  emphatically  to  social  construction.  Some  of  the  common¬ 
places  of  the  Conference  today  would  have  sounded  wildly 
radical  if  not  Utopian  to  many  who  were  leaders  in  1890.  To 
have  had  a  share  in  that  marvelous  transformation  fills  me  with 
gratitude  to  those  who  first  caught  the  vision, — who  kindled  the 
torch,  ran  with  it  a  few  steps,  and  then  handed  it  to  others  each 
to  carry  a  little  way  and  in  turn  pass  it  to  their  successors. 

When  we  went  from  Indianapolis  to  the  Conference  it  was 
with  the  determination  to  bring  back  with  us  the  promise  of  the 
meeting  of  1891.  We  took  a  Pullman  car  load  of  thirty-one 
people.  Mr.  McCulloch  and  I  had  outlined  our  campaign;  we 
had  resolved  to  use  our  best  persuasion  before  the  committee  on 
time  and  place  and  get,  if  possible,  a  unanimous  report;  but  if 
we  failed  in  that  our  plan  was  to  secure  a  minority  report  and 
then  get  the  floor  and  with  all  the  powers  of  speech  we  had 
stampede  the  Conference  into  supporting  the  minority.  As  it 
turned  out  although  there  were  five  or  six  other  invitations  to 
consider  we  had  no  trouble;  the  report  was  in  our  favor. 

As  Indianapolis  was  chosen  Mr.  McCulloch  was  the  logical 
president.  He  had  force,  eloquence,  character  and  he  was  a  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  Board  of  State  Charities.  After  the  election  was  over 
the  local  committee  invited  us  to  a  carriage  ride  about  the  city. 


As  Secretary — First  Series,  1890-1893  297 

I  was  in  the  same  vehicle  with  Mr.  McCulloch  and  noticed  how 
silent  he  was,  he  who  usually  had  so  many  interesting  things  to 
say;  this  endured  for  the  first  hour  of  our  ride  when  he  turned 
to  me  with  a  smile  and  said  “ Johnson,  I  have  got  it  all  settled”. 
I  said  “settled  what?”  He  said  “our  Conference”.  He  had 
planned  his  arrangements  for  the  local  committee,  chosen  the 
chairman,  the  method  of  raising  the  necessary  local  contribution, 
the  place  of  meeting,  and  had  outlined  his  presidential  address. 
Thenceforth  for  the  rest  of  the  ride  he  was  his  old  genial  self. 

At  the  concluding  meeting,  a  wonderful  gathering,  a  crowded 
house  in  a  large  theatre,  the  stage  full  of  distinguished  people; 
Cardinal  Gibbons  in  his  scarlet  robes  the  most  conspicuous  fig¬ 
ure;  Hr.  Byers  was  taken  sick  and  had  to  leave  the  platform. 
Oscar  McCulloch,  the  incoming  president,  on  receiving  the  gavel 
paid  a  touching  tribute  to  the  old  veteran  whom  he  was  to  suc¬ 
ceed.  The  occasion  was  an  intense  and  pathetic  one.  The  con¬ 
trast  was  extreme.  McCulloch,  though  slender,  was  the  picture 
of  middle-age  virility;  his  splendid,  resonant,  human  voice  was 
at  its  best.  Byers,  feeble  and  frail,  was  a  vision  of  outworn 
senescence. 

Before  the  next  Conference  convened  Hr.  Byers  was  given 
still  greater  promotion  he  left  us  for  his  permanent  home.  And 
after  Mr.  McCulloch’s  magnificent  Conference  in  Indianapolis, 
he  too  passed  over,  before  his  friend  and  comrade  Myron  Reed 
called  the  Benver  Conference  to  order  in  1892. 

At  the  close  of  the  Baltimore  Conference  I  spent  three  days 
as  the  guest  of  Mr.  John  M.  Glenn,  visiting  with  him  the  various 
state  and  city  institutions  and  discussing  social  work.  His 
friendship  then  gained  has  been  one  of  the  valued  possessions  of 
ray  life. 

The  Indianapolis  meeting  in  1891  was  an  especially  memor¬ 
able  one  for  our  board  and  myself.  With  one  member  presiding 
every  member  in  attendance  and  its  secretary  the  secretary  of 
the  Conference,  we  were  much  in  the  limelight.  Our  board  was 
only  two  years  old  so  that  its  novity  made  it  attractive  to  the 
newsgatherers.  Mr.  McCulloch  was  an  expert  in  publicity  as  in 
everything  he  touched  and  very  popular  with  the  newspaper 
people ;  so  the  proceedings  were  better  reported  than  ever  before ; 
he  had  secured  from  nearly  every  speaker  an  advance  copy  of 


298 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


his  paper ;  these  with  infinite  labor  he  briefed ;  had  them  printed 
in  galleys  by  the  local  agent  of  the  Associated  Press;  and  sent 
to  a  large  number  of  newspapers  with  a  release  date;  and  most 
of  them  were  used. 

The  sessions  were  held  in  Plymouth  church  of  which  Mr. 
McCulloch  was  pastor.  It  was  a  fine  auditorium  with  good 
acoustics  and  plenty  of  vestries  for  committee  meetings.  The 
chairman  of  the  local  committee  was  H.  H.  Hanna,  a  leading 
business  man  who,  though  not  a  member  of  his  church,  was  a 
great  admirer  of  Mr.  McCulloch.  His  method  of  collecting  the 
local  fund  is  worth  telling.  He  wrote  personal  letters  to  some 
people  explaining  the  Conference  and  its  value  to  the  city  and 
state  each  ending  “your  share  of  the  necessary  local  expense  of 
$3000.00,  is  f 100.00 ;  please  send  a  check  to  the  treasurer”.  A  few 
more  he  assessed  $50.00;  others  $25.00;  and  a  very  few  $10.00. 
Only  one  letter  failed  to  bring  the  check  requested,  and  this  was 
to  a  man  who  sailed  for  Europe  before  the  Conference  met.  I 
tried  the  same  plan  in  miniature  for  the  state  Conference  which 
met  in  Fort  Wayne  in  1903,  with  similar  results;  I  learned  the 
lesson  that  in  raising  money  it’s  always  well  to  ask  each  man 
for  a  definite  sum ;  if  that  is  a  liberal  one  the  implied  compliment 
is  valued. 

A  feature  of  the  Indianapolis  Conference  which  has  some¬ 
times  been  repeated  but  never  equalled  was  the  introduction  of 
congregational  singing.  McCulloch  was  an  artist  in  church  serv¬ 
ices  and  a  great  believer  in  the  humanizing  effect  of  people  sing¬ 
ing  together.  The  organ  in  his  church  was  with  one  exception 
the  best  west  of  the  Alleghanies  and  was  used  at  every  session. 
We  compiled  a  little  book  of  Conference  songs  with  tunes  which 
everyone  knows,  and  we  sang  once  or  twice  at  each  session. 

When  I  was  president  of  the  Indiana  State  Conference  I 
reprinted  this  song-book  with  Mr.  McCulloch’s  portrait  as  a 
frontispiece  and  under  the  picture  one  of  his  favorite  bits  from 
Browning  which  I  thought  very  appropriate  for  him, 

“One  who  never  turned  his  back,  but  marched  breast  forward; 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break ; 

Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triumph ; 

Held  we  fall  to  rise;  are  baffled  to  fight  better;  sleep  to  wake;” 

Of  course  the  members  of  the  state  board  had  to  take  part  and 
John  R.  Elder  read  a  paper  on  “How  it  looks  to  a  New  Member”. 


As  Secretary — First  Series,  1890-1893 


299 


Early  in  the  state  board  work  Mr.  Elder  had  been  discouraged 
at  finding,  as  he  said,  that  the  board  had  no  authority;  that  no 
matter  how  rotten  we  might  find  things  we  had  no  way  to  right 
them.  I  told  him  that  he  was  mistaken,  that  we  had  the  very 
strongest  force  in  the  world  behind  us;  that  of  public  opinion; 
without  which  no  law-made  power  can  be  effective  in  the  lines 
of  our  work.  He  had  decided  on  resigning  but  changed  his  mind 
and  remained  a  useful  member  for  many  years,  until  failing 
health  compelled  his  resignation. 

As  our  board  was  new  to  the  public  the  discussion  on  state 
boards  was  a  popular  part  of  the  program  to  the  local  people. 
During  this  we  had  a  piece  of  testimony  from  Dr.  Thomas  the 
newly  installed  superintendent  of  the  Southern  hospital.  He 
had  been  an  early  opponent  of  the  board;  had  been  interviewed 
and  had  spoken  in  a  very  uncomplimentary  manner.  I  called 
on  him  the  day  the  interview  appeared  and  made  him  change  his 
opinion  and  when  he  became  superintendent  of  the  Southern 
hospital  and  was  having  trouble  with  an  ignorant  and  old- 
fashioned  board  of  trustees  I  helped  him  materially.  In  his 
speech  at  the  Conference  he  told  of  his  early  distrust  and  opposi¬ 
tion;  but  said  that  since  he  had  learned  to  know  our  board  he 
would  not  wish  to  be  superintendent  of  a  hospital  in  a  state 
which  lacked  so  useful  a  department  of  government. 

The  care  of  the  feeble-minded  had  been  introduced  to  the  Con¬ 
ference  in  1884,  and  a  committee  on  the  subject  under  slightly 
varying  titles,  became  a  permanent  one  for  more  than  thirty 
years.  Much  of  the  present  public  interest  in  that  vital  topic  has 
come  from  the  Conference.  At  Indianapolis  Dr.  Fish  of  Illinois 
brought  out  a  new  feature  in  a  paper  on  “Colony  Care  for  All 
the  Feeble-Minded’7.  This  was  the  introduction  of  the  principle 
of  permanent  care;  and  my  own  convictions  which  I  was  to  have 
the  opportunity  to  carry  out  at  Fort  Wayne  a  few  years  later 
were  based  on  this  paper  and  similar  ones  at  later  Conferences. 

When  the  time  and  place  committee  reported  Denver  was 
chosen  for  the  Conference  of  1892.  Rev.  Myron  Reed  of  Denver 
had  been  a  faithful  comrade  of  Mr.  McCulloch  when  they  had 
preached  in  neighboring  churches  in  Indianapolis.  Together 
they  had  put  thru  many  social  reforms,  “Mac,”  as  Reed  lovingly 
called  him,  always  the  leader.  Their  first  meeting  had  been  at  a 


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Monday  morning  gathering  of  ministers  before  which  Reed  had 
presented  a  paper  on  Mathew  Arnold.  As  soon  as  he  sat  down 
all  his  clerical  brethren  save  one  expressed  their  horror  of  Arnold 
as  an  atheist;  all  the  more  dangerous  because  of  his  personal 
morality  and  his  attractive  literary  style.  They  warned  Reed 
that  he  was  on  dangerous  ground;  that  when  he  spoke  well  of 
Arnold  his  own  orthodoxy  would  be  seriously  questioned. 

When  the  torrent  of  invective  ceased, — as  Reed  told  the 
story, — a  modest  looking  young  man,  a  stranger  to  the  rest,  rose 
and  quietly  said  it  was  evident  that  no  one  present  but  Mr.  Reed 
and  himself  had  ever  read  Arnold;  and  went  on  to  show  how 
futile  was  all  the  terror  which  the  brethren  had  expressed.  The 
stranger  was  McCulloch  who  had  just  taken  Plymouth  Church 
and  as  he  sat  down  Reed  grasped  his  hand  and  thenceforth  they 
stuck  closer  than  brothers. 

Reed  was  pastor  of  a  Presbyterian  and  McCulloch  of  a  Con¬ 
gregational  Church.  They  were  equally  liberal  in  their  doctrine 
and  equally  enthusiastic  in  social  welfare.  For  years  thereafter 
they  worked  side  by  side;  read  the  same  books;  every  kind  of 
literature  except  theological  which  both  eschewed ;  preached  from 
the  same  texts;  spent  their  vacations  together  fishing  the  same 
Northern  streams.  Reed  used  to  tell  with  gusto,  of  Mac,  up  to 
his  middle  in  ice-cold  water,  in  a  rough,  rocky  stream,  handling 
a  five  pound  trout  on  an  eight  ounce  rod,  and  quoting  “Paracel¬ 
sus”,  or  “the  Ring  and  the  Book”.  They  were  strong  Browning- 
ites  and  led  a  little  Browning  Society.  Reed  used  to  say  it  was 
their  test  of  brains;  anyone  who  could  understand  and  appre¬ 
ciate  Browning  was  good  to  tie  to ;  he  would  not  misunderstand 
you. 

As  Reed  was  now  holding  the  same  place  in  Denver  as  leader 
in  liberal  opinion  and  in  social  work  that  his  friend  held  in 
Indianapolis;  and  as  the  Conference  was  going  to  Denver  in 
1892,  Mr.  McCulloch  determined  that  his  comrade  should  follow 
him  as  president. 

Now  I  knew  Reed  and  loved  and  respected  him  for  what  he 
was;  but  he  had  not  the  qualities  needed  for  a  president  of  the 
Conference ;  he  hated  detail ;  he  could  not  do  plodding  work ;  he 
was  rather  impatient  of  stupid  people.  McCulloch  knew  all  this 
as  well  as  I;  but  he  was  the  most  faithful  of  friends;  he  wanted 


As  Secretary— First  Series,  1890-1893  301 

Reed  to  have  the  honor, and  the  strength  in  his  city  which  the 
position  might  lend  him.  When  I  remonstrated  he  said  he  had 
determined  to  help  Reed  out  that  he  would  do  the  preparatory 
routine  work  for  him  and  help  him  to  ntake  the  program.  But 
though  he  did  not  know  it  he  was  then  carrying  the  seeds  of  dis¬ 
ease  which  had  a  quick  development  in  his  death  a  few  months 
later;  so  his  plans  to  help  his  friend  carry  off  with  credit  the 
honor  he  had  insisted  on  giving  him,  were  of  no  avail. 

McCulloch’s  influence  prevailed  and  Reed  was  elected.  I  was 
re-elected  secretary.  I  explained  to  Mr.  Reed  what  a  president’s 
duties  were;  making  the  program  for  which  he  was  wholly 
responsible ;  the  vast  amount  of  correspondence  needed  at  once  in 
confirming  committee  appointments  and  all  the  rest.  He  said, 
“I  can’t  do  that  I  sail  next  week  for  three  months  in  Europe”. 
Then  I  asked  him  if  he  would  stand  for  whatever  I  did  in  his 
name  during  his  absence  and  he  heartily  agreed. 

When  Reed  returned  to  the  U.  S.  I  had  a  copying  book  (it  was 
before  the  days  of  carbon  paper)  full  -of  letters,  and  scores  of 
answers.  I  wrote  reminding  him  of  his  job  and  asking  him  to 
take  it  over  at  once.  To  this  came  no  reply  nor  to  a  second  letter 
of  the  same  tenor.  Then  I  wired  him  that  I  would  ship  the  mass 
of  correspondence  by  express.  He  answered  by  wire  adon’t  you 
dare  ship  that  stuff  to  me”. 

We  finally  agreed  that  I  was  to  continue  with  the  program 
and  other  detail  he  promising  to  pay  any  bill  for  expenses  I 
should  present.  When  the  program  was  ready  we  called  an 
executive  committee  meeting  in  Chicago,  which  was  more  fully 
attended  than  was  usual  at  meetings  between  Conferences  there 
being  nine  or  ten  present.  At  Indianapolis  a  committee  on  sec¬ 
tion  meetings  had  reported  favorably  but  had  referred  the  matter 
to  the  executive  committee  for  action.  This  was  pending  and 
was  felt  to  be  important  as  it  involved  a  new  principle  and  a 
new  development  of  the  Conference.  The  executive  committee 
consented  with  some  reluctance  to  the  new  plan,  in  fact  Hastings 
Hart,  the  president,  and  I  were  the  only  ones  at  all  enthusiastic. 
The  dread  of  division  which  sectionalism  might  lead  to  was  still 
very  strong,  and  we  were  emphatically  forbidden  to  use  the  term 
“section”  we  might  only  speak  of  “special”  sessions. 


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After  the  discussion  on  the  new  deal  was  over  Reed  said, 
“Now,  Mr.  Johnson  read  our  program  to  these  gentlemen”.  Then 
he  called  for  criticism;  there  being  none  he  polled  the  meeting; 
asking  each  in  turn  “Mr.  Elmore,  does  this  suit  you?”  “Mr. 
Wines,  what  have  you  to  say?”  “Mr.  Hart,  do  you  approve?” 
After  getting  expressions  of  satisfaction  from  each  he  said  “now 
gentlemen,  I  have  not  written  a  letter  nor  done  a  thing  about  that 
program.  It’s  Johnson’s  work  from  beginning  to  end.”  This 
made  it  easy  for  me;  if  it  had  been  presented  as  my  tentative 
sketch ;  instead  of  a  finished  project  by  him ;  there  would  have 
been  many  suggestions  of  change.  Reed  had  the  art  of  making 
his  friends  do  his  work  for  him  but  he  was  always  positive  in 
giving  them  all  the  credit  they  deserved. 

The  Denver  Conference  under  the  new  method  of  numerous 
meetings  in  different  halls  was  increasingly  interesting,  but  it 
greatly  increased  the  work  of  the  secretary.  To  keep  track  of  all 
that  was  going  on ;  to  be  able  to  direct  enquiring  delegates  who 
would  not  study  their  programs,  to  the  meeting  they  wished  to 
attend;  to  assign  with  prophetic  insight  each  meeting  to  a  hall 
that  would  be  just  the  right  size  for  it ;  to  make  certain  that  the 
janitors  had  three  or  four  halls  ready;  to  keep  seven  or  eight  . 
chairmen  in  the  path  of  duty  instead  of  just  one  President;  to 
placate  chairmen  who  thought ‘their  meetings  were  not  properly 
advertised  so  that  delegates  were  not  paying  enough  attention  to 
them  but  were  wandering  off  after  strange  gods;  all  these  and 
a  thousand  and  one  other  details  made  the  seven  days  of  the 
Conference  a  most  strenuous  time ;  not  only  for  the  secretary  but 
for  the  local  committee;  who  also  must  be  managed  and  kept  in 
good  humor.  And  while  doing  and  seeing  to  all  these  things  to 
keep  one’s  own  head  and  preserve  one’s  own  good  humor,  gave 
the  task  the  attraction  that  comes  from  a  difficult  job.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  the  day  the  excitement  was  over  and  the  Confer¬ 
ence  adjourned,  the  secretary  was  in  a  condition  approaching 
collapse. 

Mr.  Reed  carried  a  strong  infusion  of  Indian  blood  in  his 
veins,  his  grandmother  was  a  full-blood  Narragansett  Indian. 
He  could  sit  for  hours  on  a  log  in  the  woods  but  a  few  minutes  in 
the  chair  at  a  meeting  irked  him.  At  the  first  morning  session 
I  saw  him  becoming  restless  and  reminded  him  that  he  had  three 


As  Secretary — First  Series,  1890-1893 


303 


vice-presidents  any  one  of  whom  he  might  call  to  the  chair  if  he 
wished  to  do  so.  With  a  gleam  in  his  eye  and  a  sigh  of  relief 
he  replied,  “tell  that  man  Hart  I  want  him”.  I  brought  Hart 
to  the  chair  and  Reed  went  to  the  back  of  the  house  where  he 
stood  behind  the  last  row  of  seats,  breathing  deeply  and  occa¬ 
sionally  stretching  out  his  arms  in  a  characteristic  gesture,  until 
the  meeting  adjourned. 

It  was  usual  before  the  membership  became  too  large,  to 
devote  an  hour  at  each  Conference  to  memorial  addresses  in 
honor  of  well-known  members  who  had  died  since  the  last  meet¬ 
ing.  The  addresses  at  Denver  in  memory  of  Mr.  McCulloch,  of 
whom  our  thoughts  were  still  so  fresh  and  who  was  very  much 
beloved,  were  particularly  beautiful  and  appropriate.  One  of 
the  most  touching  was  by  Mr.  Reed.  No  one  else  had  known  our 
dead  friend  so  intimately,  nor  had  been  under  such  spiritual 
debt  to  him.  In  concluding  his  speech  he  told  of  a  fishing  trip 
among  the  mountains,  which  he  had  shared  with  Mr.  McCulloch ; 
how  they  were  driving  towards  Leadville  and  had  got  on  the 
wrong  road.  Inquiring  from  a  teamster  whom  they  met  he  told 
them  they  were  on  the  road  that  led  to  the  Mount  of  the  Holy 
Cross,  and  they  turned  back.  “Since  then,”  Reed  said,  “he  has 
returned  to  that  road  and  has  arrived;  and  I,  for  my  part  tread 
a  somewhat  lonesome  trail.” 

It  is  hard  to  turn  away  from  thinking  and  writing  of  a  man 
whom  I  loved  as  I  did  Oscar  McCulloch.  When  I  remember  what 
he  was  and  what  he  did  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  him  as  non¬ 
existent.  But  certainly  he  lives  again  as  part  of  “the  choir 
invisible,  whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world”.  His  influ¬ 
ence  on  the  city  and  state  which  loved  him  and  he  loved,  did  not 
end  with  his  death.  I  know  of  no  better  example  than  his 

“Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence.” 

and  who  are 

The  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused, 

And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense.” 

The  Denver  meeting  closed  my  first  period  as  secretary,  as  I 
was  chosen  general  secretary  of  an  international  meeting  to  be 
held  at  Chicago  in  1893,  and  the  two  positions  were  thought  to 


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Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


make  too  heavy  a  burden  for  one  volunteer  worker  to  carry. 
Many  interesting  adventures  came  to  me  before  I  became  the 
secretary  as  a  vocation,  instead  of  an  avocation,  in  1904.  The 
second  series  of  my  adventures  as  secretary  of  the  Conference 
will  be  written  later.  The  next  chapter  to  this  will  tell  of  the 
meetings  I  attended  while  I  lived  and  worked  among  the  feeble¬ 
minded. 


Chapter  Four 


CONFERENCES  FROM  1893  TO  1904 
In  Chicago,  1893 

As  the  World’s  Columbian  Exposition  was  to  be  held  in  Chi¬ 
cago,  that  city  was  selected  for  the  session  of  1893.  This  was  a 
departure  from  a  previous  wise  custom  of  avoiding  any  city  at  a 
time  of  some  other  great  meeting.  A  large  part  of  the  useful¬ 
ness  of  the  Conference  is  in  calling  affairs  of  social  welfare  to 
the  attention  of  the  leading  people  in  the  city  which  acts  as  host ; 
so  that  it  does  well  not  to  compete  with  other  interesting  public 
gatherings.  Only  once  since  1893  has  this  rule  been  ignored ;  that 
was  when  we  met  in  Portland,  Ore.,  in  1905,  during  the  exposi¬ 
tion  there;  and  the  local  interest  was  so  poor  that  the  attend¬ 
ance  from  Portland  and  all  the  Coast  was  less  than  one-half  of 
the  number  of  delegates  who  crossed  the  continental  divide  to 
attend. 

At  Chicago,  Hastings  H.  Hart  was  president  and  his  pro¬ 
gram  was  an  historical  one.  It  was  the  twentieth  Conference. 
Each  committee  chairman  made  his  report  a  history  of  the 
interest  he  represented.  When,  in  1905,  I  began  a  systematic 
effort  to  sell  the  accumulated  files  of  proceedings  to  college  and 
public  libraries,  and  to  students  of  social  affairs;  I  always 
advised  as  complete  a  file  as  could  be  furnished,  but  recom¬ 
mended  those  who  could  not  afford  to  buy  all  the  volumes  avail¬ 
able,  to  begin  with  that  of  the  historic  Conference  of  1893. 

The  Exposition  offered  a  fine  opportunity  for  big  gatherings. 
Among  these  was  an  International  Congress  of  Charities,  Correc¬ 
tion  and  Philanthropy,  which  was  organized  as  a  department  of 
The  World’s  Congress  Auxiliary  of  the  World’s  Columbian 
Exposition.  This  quite  over-shadowed  the  National  Conference 
for  the  year,  so  we  restricted  ourselves  to  a  short  three  days  ses¬ 
sion  preceding  the  Congress.  This  was  rather  hard  on  Mr.  Hart 
who  was,  and  is,  one  of  our  ablest  men,  and  who  would  have 

(305) 


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Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


given  us  a  great  seven  days  program  if  he  had  had  the  oppor¬ 
tunity. 

Over  the  International  Congress,  which  was  really  a  tem¬ 
porary  expansion  of  the  National  Conference,  ex-President 
Rutherford  B.  Hayes  presided,  and  I  was  general  secretary.  My 
friend  N.  S.  Rosenau  was  organizing  secretary.  In  connection 
with  the  Congress,  a  department  of  the  World’s  Exposition  was 
devoted  to  Charities  and  Correction,  and  Rosenau  was  its 
Director,  which  duty  he  performed  with  much  ability. 

Frederick  H.  Wines  was  first  vice-president  of  the  Congress, 
and  was  the  active  man,  with  Rosenau,  in  planning  it.  Among 
his  other  duties  was  to  secure  a  preacher  for  a  congress  sermon. 
I  was  somewhat  disturbed  when  he  told  me  that  the  minister 
was  to  be  the  Rev.  Anna  Garlin  Spencer;  not  because  of  any 
objection  of  my  own  to  a  woman  .preacher,  but  fearing  that 
popular  opinion  would  be  adverse.  Wines  assured  me  that  the 
choice  was  good  and  said  “wait  till  you  hear  her,  you  will  find 
I  have  made  no  mistake”. 

Mrs.  Spencer’s  sermon  was  one  of  the  most  inspiring  I  have 
ever  heard.  She  was  a  woman  of  deep  spirituality,  with  a  won¬ 
derful  brain  and  a  heart  for  all  humanity.  Her  voice  was  of  fine 
quality,  and  coming  from  a  frail  and  exquisite  body,  of  surpris¬ 
ing  power.  She  made  a  great  impression  on  her  hearers,  many 
of  whom  were  distinguished  people  and  most  of  whom  had  never 
listened  to  a  woman  preacher.  This  was  before  women  had  come 
into  their  own;  in  the  days  when  the  highest  praise  we  men  folk 
would  give  to  some,  as  we  thought,  exceptional  speaker  of  the 
gentler  sex,  was  that  she  did  remarkably  well  for  a  woman. 
Perhaps  some  of  our  grandchildren  may  say,  of  some  exceptional 
male  orator,  “how  well  he  speaks — for  a  man”. 

I  had  the  privilege  of  winning  Mrs.  Spencer’s  friendship  at 
the  Congress,  tho  I  little  thought  then  how  close  and  satisfactory 
our  relations  were  to  be  when  she  and  I  became  associate  direc¬ 
tors  of  the  N.  Y.  School  of  Philanthropy,  eleven  years  later. 

I  had  already  been  appointed  superintendent  of  the  school  for 
feeble-minded  so  that  the  Chicago  Conference  was  the  last  I  was 
to  attend  as  secretary  of  a  Board  of  State  Charities.  I  look  back 
on  those  meetings  from  1890  to  1893,  my  first  period  as  secre¬ 
tary,  as  among  the  pleasantest  memories  of  my  life,  I  never  made 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


307 


so  many  nor  so  good  friends  during  the  same  length  of  time,  and 
in  1896,  the  fact  that  I  had  been  secretary  of  the  Conference 
while  connected  with  a  Board  of  State  Charities,  was  one  reason 
why  my  election  as  president  seemed  appropriate;  notwithstand¬ 
ing  that  at  the  time  I  was  in  such  different  work.  I  was  the  only 
superintendent  of  a  state  institution,  who  ever  received  the  honor 
of  the  presidency. 

Nashville  in  1894 

The  Conference  of  1894  was  at  Nashville.  Here  the  unwritten 
law,  that  the  president  must  represent  a  state  board,  was  abro¬ 
gated  when  Kobert  Treat  Paine,  president  of  the  Boston  Asso¬ 
ciated  Charities  was  chosen.  He  was  a  man  of  illustrious  line¬ 
age,  fine  culture  and  attractive  personality;  one  of  the  few  who 
in  middle  life  have  had  the  resolution  to  abandon  a  profitable 
profession  in  which  he  was  very  successful,  and  devote  himself 
to  the  welfare  of  his  kind.  His  connection  with  the  Associated 
Charities  was  one  of  the  main  reasons — there  were  many  others 
of  the  same  kind  and  quality — why  the  Boston  society  was  so 
clearly  the  best  among  the  many  useful  ones. 

In  writing  of  the  leaders  in  the  Conference  the  temptation  to 
exhaust  the  superlative  is  almost  irresistible.  It  may  be  I  am 
overzealous  in  their  praise,  but  I  know  that  whatever  is  best  in 
my  own  character  is  largely  due  to  contact  with  them.  One  can¬ 
not  live  with  ignoble  minds  without  loss ;  nor  associate  on  terms 
of  equal  opportunity  with  noble  people  without  some  gain  of 
nobility.  It  is  one  of  the  chief  attractions  of  the  profession  of 
social  work  that  one’s  associate  workers  are  usually  people  whose 
character  helps  enhance  one’s  own.  At  any  rate,  if  I  am  to  write 
of  them  at  all,  I  must  write  as  I  feel ;  so  I  shall  risk  the  old  fling 
that  was  sometimes  made;  that  we  were  a  mutual  admiration 
society. 

At  Nashville  I  had  a  few  friends,  and  many  pleasant  memo¬ 
ries,  dating  from  the  time  when  we  went  to  that  city  for  the 
American  Prison  Association’s  meeting  in  1889.  That  was  one 
of  the  National  meetings  that  I  had  to  attend,  as  secretary  of 
the  state  board.  While  interesting  and  useful  they  were  so  far 
overshadowed  by  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Cor¬ 
rection,  that  my  memory  of  them  is  comparatively  dim.  Not 


308 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


being  a  prison  man  I  did  not  take  much  active  part,  although  I 
did  get  a  few  ideas  which  helped  me  in  my  work  as  inspector  of 
prisons  and  other  penal  institutions. 

At  Nashville  a  committee  reported  on  “Instruction  in  Sociol¬ 
ogy  in  Institutions  of  Learning”.  This  subject  had  been  pre¬ 
sented  at  the  International  Congress  in  Chicago  the  year  pre¬ 
vious,  but  it  was  introduced  to  the  National  Conference  now  for 
the  first  time.  The  chairman  was  Dr.  Fulcomer,  lecturer  in 
social  science  in  the  University  of  Chicago.  Dr.  Fulcomer’s 
ideas  of  social  science  were  very  practical  and  his  paper  was  an 
emphatic  public  recognition  by  a  university  man  that  our  science 
of  social  work  exists  and  is  an  integral  part,  or  a  practical  appli¬ 
cation,  of  the  science  of  sociology.  The  report  in  the  proceedings 
is  still  valuable  for  reference  as  a  summary  of  sociology  teach¬ 
ers  and  classes  of  that  date.  During  the  discussion  on  this  report 
one  good  talk  was  by  Miss  Lathrop  on  “Hull  House  as  a  Socio¬ 
logical  Laboratory”,  thus  linking  up  the  settlements  with  the 
National  Conference  on  its  highest  side. 

The  National  Association  of  Officers  of  Institutions  for  the 
Feeble-Minded  met  at  Nashville  with  the  Conference,  so  that  the 
discussions  on  feeble  mindedness  were  better  than  uspal.  As  I 
came  to  the  Conference  representing  the  Indiana  School,  I  was 
eager  to  learn  all  the  experienced  people  had  to  teach.  A  paper 
by  Mrs.  Isabel  C.  Barrows  is  still  one  of  the  best  on  its  subject, 
“Manual  Training  for  the  Feeble-Minded”.  It  was  given  in  con¬ 
nection  with  a  useful  exhibit  of  handwork  from  several  insti¬ 
tutions. 

The  attendance  at  Nashville  was  only  fair,  and  towards  the 
end  of  the  session  the  local  interest  seemed  to  fall  off  from  day 
to  day,  or  so  at  least  the  executive  committee  thought.  The  pro¬ 
gram  called  for  the  final  meeting  on  Wednesday,  but  on  Monday 
morning  the  committee,  fearing  a  fiasco,  decided  to  cut  one  day 
and  adjourn  to  Memphis  where  they  were  invited  to  hold  two 
or  three  meetings. 

Although  a  member  of  the  executive  committee  I  had  missed 
the  meeting,  but  as  soon  as  I  heard  the  decision  I  was  indignant. 
Roseneau  joined  heartily  with  me  and  together  we  canvassed 
the  committee  and  got  another  meeting.  We  told  them  they 
must  keep  faith  with  the  public ;  we  had  promised  a  meeting  on 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


309 


Wednesday  and  we  ought  to  hold  it,  if  there  were  only  a  cor- 
poraPs  guard  of  us  left ;  that  they  were  all  wrong  about  interest 
falling  off;  that  the  last  meeting  would  be  one  of  the  best. 
When  they  said  that  because  of  lapses  they  had  no  speakers  for 
e d  esday ,  we  said  we  had  lots  of  program  available.  Then 
they  told  us  we  might  go  ahead  but  they  were  going  to  Memphis. 

Then  Rosenau  and  I  got  busy.  We  found  excellent  speakers 
and  the  meeting  was  the  largest  of  the  Conference,  except  the 
one  on  Sunday  night,  and  faith  was  kept  with  the  public.  Since 
that  day  the  Conference  has  never  cut  its  advertised  program, 
nor  indeed  has  it  had  any  temptation  to  do  so  for  want  of  mate¬ 
rial,  its  programs  are  usually  overloaded. 

At  our  meeting  we  specialized  in  women  speakers  getting 
Mrs.  C.  W.  Fairbanks  of  the  Indiana  State  Board  to  talk  on 
“Women  on  Public  Boards”,  and  Miss  Julia  C.  Lathrop  of  Hull 
House  to  tell  us  about  “Nursing  in  Chicago”.  This  was  Miss 
Lathrop’s  first  Conference,  and  she  won  a  distinct  place  among 
Conference  speakers.  Every  one  who  has  heard  her  give  a  public 
address  will  understand  how  her  charming  voice  and  manner  and 
her  delicious  sense  of  humor  captivated  the  people  of  that  South¬ 
ern  city,  to  many  of  whom  the  idea  of  a  woman  speaker  was  new. 

When  the  Conference  met  eight  years  later  at  Detroit,  Miss 
Lathrop  was  chairman  of  the  committee  on  insanity,  and  gave 
the  best  statement  to  date  of  the  social  side  of  the  care  of  the 
insane.  By  1902  the  sex  line  in  Conference  affairs  was  almost 
obliterated,  though  we  still  had  to  wait  a  few  years  for  a  woman 
president.  Miss  Lathrop  was  a  member  of  the  Illinois  State 
Board  and  a  resident  of  Hull  House;  the  opportunities  she  had 
had  for  first  hand  knowledge  of  social  conditions  and  of  state 
affairs  were  unusually  good  and  she  made  good  use  of  them. 
There  have  been  few  public  men,  still  fewer  women,  who  have  had 
equal  opportunities  of  information,  or  equal  powers  of  both  head 
and  heart  to  use  them.  She  was  the  first  woman  to  be  made 
head  of  an  important  department  of  the  U.  S.  Government,  and 
no  department  has  made  a  higher  reputation.  She  was  presi¬ 
dent  of  the  National  Conference  in  1919,  at  Atlantic  City,  and 
showed  rare  ability  in  the  chair,  handling  some  rather  difficult 
situations  with  tact,  judgment  and  firmness. 


310 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


Yale  and  the  Conference 

The  Conference  of  1895  was  held  under  the  famous  elm  trees 
of  New  Haven.  It  was  notable  because  of  its  president,  the  first 
to  be  elected  from  outside  the  circle  of  the  state  boards,  and  from 
the  interest  taken  in  it  by  eminent  university  men.  The  dean 
of  Yale  Law  School,  Judge  Francis  Wayland,  was  chairman  of 
the  local  committee.  The  committee  on  Sociology  in  Institutions 
of  Learning  offered  five  papers,  each  by  a  university  man;  one 
from  Columbia,  one  from  Smith,  one  from  Chicago  and  two  who 
were  at  home  at  Yale;  and  there  were  three  other  papers  at  the 
Conference  by  college  professors. 

Sociology  was  then  one  of  the  new  sciences ;  it  was  knocking 
at  the  doors  of  colleges  and  gaining  tardy  and  cool  reception  at 
some  of  them.  Many  people  said  there  could  be  no  science  of 
human  behavior  since  what  a  man  would  do  under  a  given  set 
of  circumstances  could  not  be  predicted,  and  no  given  set  of  cir¬ 
cumstances  could  ever  be  exactly  repeated.  Some  purists  even 
criticized  the  name  of  the  new  science  because  it  was  a  hybrid 
of  Greek  and  Latin.  There  might  indeed  be  a  science  of  Political 
Economy,  or  the  Wealth  of  Nations,  because  that  was  founded 
on  selfishness  and  every  man  is  selfish,  at  any  rate  every  man 
has  a  stomach  to  be  filled.  But  a  science  which  should  build 
itself  of  such  thin  air  as  altruistic  sentiment,  would  surely  fade 
like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision. 

Yet  here  were  some  feeble  social  workers,  pretending  that 
there  could  be  a  science  even  of  their  little  department  of  social 
affairs;  the  least  exact  of  any,  since  it  involved  the  higher  emo¬ 
tions.  And  here  at  the  very  seat  of  learning,  and  helped  by  the 
most  learned  professors ;  we  would-be  scientists  got  more  encour¬ 
agement  than  we  ever  had  before. 

Things  have  progressed  since  1895,  and  every  university  has 
its  course  of  sociology  (though  we  hear  of  one*  that  is  dropping 
it  for  geology — the  students  who  ask  for  social  bread  are  to  be 
offered  a  stone)  and  many  have  a  department  of  applied  sociol¬ 
ogy  which  is  social  welfare.  The  events  at  New  Haven,  when 
Yale  joined  hands  with  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  and 
Correction,  have  surely  had  some  influence  in  this  advance. 


♦The  University  of  Georgia. 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


311 


• 

By  this  time  the  C.  O.  S.  section  (they  were  not  sections  then 
but  I  use  the  term  for  convenience)  was  no  longer  my  chief 
attraction ;  what  I  was  now  concerned  with  treated  of  the  defec¬ 
tives,  especially  the  feeble-minded.  Just  as  family  welfare  work 
had  seemed  to  me,  in  1884,  to  be  the  only,  or  the  straightest  road 
to  social  reform;  so  now  the  prevention  of  hereditary  defective¬ 
ness  seemed  the  most  important  study.  There  were  some  valu¬ 
able  papers  and  discussions  on  this  topic,  one  by  Dr.  George 
Keene  on  “The  Genesis  of  the  Defective”  gave  Frank  B.  San¬ 
born,  who  was  nothing  if  not  a  humorist,  a  chance  for  one  of  his 
famous  bon  mots.  He  said  “we  don’t  want  to  hear  of  the  Genesis 
of  the  Defective,  tell  us  of  his  Exodus”. 

At  New  Haven  once  more  the  superintendents  of  institutions 
for  the  feeble-minded  attempted  to  hold  their  meeting  in  connec¬ 
tion  with  the  Conference.  The  result  was  unfavorable;  but  I 
induced  them  to  try  it  again  the  next  year  at  Grand  Rapids. 
There,  as  at  New  Haven,  their  association  was  over-shadowed  by 
the  large  one;  attention  was  dissipated  and  lost,  and  they  did 
not  repeat  the  experiment.  Most  of  the  members  were  physi¬ 
cians  and  though  they  were  always  scrupulously  fair  to  us  who 
were  laymen,  the  majority  felt  more  drawn  to  the  American 
Medical  Association  than  to  the  Conference  of  Charities.  Being 
doctors  they  saw  the  medical  part  of  the  work  as  most  important ; 
the  laymen  amongst  us  more  correctly  estimated  the  social  as 
far  more  necessary  to  the  community  than  the  medical  side,  but 
we  were  in  a  very  small  minority  in  the  association. 

Grand  Rapids  in  1896 

By  the  time  the  Conference  met  in  Grand  Rapids  in  1896,  I 
had  made  a  reputation  as  a  ready  speaker.  Frank  B.  Sanborn 
who  had  promised  to  make  the  response  to  the  address  of  wel¬ 
come  at  the  opening  meeting,  was  belated  and  wired  his  regrets, 
and  Wright,  the  president,  five  minutes  before  the  meeting,  asked 
me  to  take  his  place.  To  my  mortification,  when  he  called  on  me, 
he  prefaced  my  speech  by  an  apology,  telling  of  my  unprepared¬ 
ness.  My  father,  fifty  years  before,  gave  me  a  homely  proverb, 
“never  cry  stinking  fish,”  (a  quaint  Lancashire  variant  of  the 
French  “qui  s’excuse,  s’accuse”),  ever  since  I  understood  that 
wise  saw  I  have  despised  pre-apologies. 


312 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


Addresses  of  welcome  are  usually  platitudinous  productions, 
but  this  time  we  had  a  welcome  from  Governor  Rich,  which  was 
eloquent,  sincere  and  luminous ;  he  showed  such  a  comprehension 
of  what  we  were  about  as  we  had  rarely  heard  expressed.  At 
the  meeting  in  Detroit  twenty  years  before,  Governor  Bagley, 
also  of  Michigan,  had  been  equally  happy  in  a  similar  address, 
and  though  I  had  not  heard  it  I  had  heard  of  it;  so  I  was  able 
to  say  that  only  once  before  had  we  received  so  able  a  welcome 
and  that  it,  like  the  present  one,  was  by  a  Governor  of  Michigan. 
Then  I  knew  of  many  fine  things  the  state  had  done  and  also 
that  their  delegates  to  the  Conference  (singularly  for  Mid- West¬ 
erners)  had  been  almost  unduly  modest  about  their  perform¬ 
ances.  Of  course  all  this  pleased  the  Michigan  people  and  my 
speech  rather  surprised  my  good  friend  Wright  and  confirmed 
my  reputation  as  a  pinch  hitter. 

Some  of  the  settlement  people,  and  especially  the  few  of  them 
who  were  also  interested  in  associated  charities;  had  long 
deplored  that  even  the  best  of  the  working  people  were  not  inter¬ 
ested  in  us  or  our  work.  A  few  of  them  got  together  at  Grand 
Rapids  and  arranged  a  Sunday  afternoon  meeting,  to  which 
working-men  were  specially  invited.  Florence  Kelley,  Julia 
Lathrop  and  a  few  others,  consented  to  speak  on  the  more  pos¬ 
sible  topics;  but  a  speaker  was  needed,  so  they  thought,  to  con¬ 
vince  working  people  that  associated  charities  is  worth  while. 
I  was  elected  to  lead  that  forlorn  hope  and  was  allowed  five  min¬ 
utes  to  do  what  they  confessed  was  an  almost  impossible  task. 
I  thought  the  same,  even  in  as  many  hours  as  they  offered  me 
minutes,  and  told  them  so.  Miss  Lathrop  was  the  chairman  as 
well  as  the  entrepreneur  of  the  meeting  and  tried  to  flatter  me 
into  making  the  attempt  by  admitting  that  it  was  almost  impos¬ 
sible,  but  that  I  was  the  only  man  (if  any)  who  could  do  it.  Of 
course  such  flattery  from  such  a  woman  was  too  much  for  me 
and  I  yielded. 

After  the  meeting  Florence  Kelley  said  to  me  “you  and  I 
have  learned  one  thing  about  public  speaking  at  any  rate”.  To 
my  question  “what  is  that?”  she  replied  “quitting”.  It  was  true 
I  had  learned  to  stop  at  the  time  appointed.  Hers  was  the  only 
compliment  I  had  on  my  speech.  It  was  deserved. 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


313 


At  Grand  Rapids  the  committee  on  feeble-minded  of  which 
T  was  chairman,  made  an  exhaustive  report  on  “Permanent  Cus¬ 
todial  Care”.  Unlike  many  of  the  reports  of  that  day,  this  was 
really  the  work  of  the  committee,  I  merely  putting  it  in  shape. 
Ernest  P.  Bicknell,  who  was  then  secretary  of  the  Indiana  Board 
of  Charities,  read  a  paper,  since  much  quoted,  on  “Feeble-Minded- 
ness  as  an  Inheritance”.  The  report  is  as  timely  today  as  it  was 
twenty-six  years  ago ;  and  BicknelPs  paper,  as  later  amplified  by 
his  successor  on  the  Indiana  Board,  Amos  W.  Butler;  remains 
the  most  thoughtful  and  conclusive  essay  on  the  social  side  of  its 
subject,  which  has  ever  been  published. 

Wright  had  asked  me  a  few  weeks  before  the  meeting,  to  fill 
my  usual  place  as  chairman  of  the  nominating  committee,  but 
when  he  made  the  announcements  my  name  was  not  on  the  list. 
I  was  just  a  trifle  piqued  and  mentioned  his  queer  action  to 
Ernest  Bicknell ;  all  he  gave  me  for  an  answer  was  a  wink  of  his 
left  eye.  I  guessed  it  meant  that  they  had  me  slated  for  some 
honor,  perhaps  vice-president,  but  when  the  committee  reported 
I  was  named  for  president.  It  was  a  complete  and  rather  stag¬ 
gering  surprise.  Bicknell  had  done  it,  I  am  afraid,  by  some  very 
quiet  (and  quite  conscientious)  wire-pulling.  At  any  rate  it  was 
done,  and  much  as  I  was  pleased  by  the  honor,  my  dear  wife,  who 
was  with  me,  was  made  still  more  happy. 

Twelve  years  later  I  got  even  with  Bicknell  and  was  able  to 
make  certain  his  nomination  as  president;  which  was  in  danger 
before  the  committee  from  a  vicious  and  treacherous  opponent; 
a  man  who  had  a  morbid  hatred  of  organized  charity  and  never 
missed  a  chance  at  the  Conference  against  any  one  who  either 
was  at  the  time,  or  had  been,  connected  with  it.  People  of  his 
sort  were  so  rare  at  the  Conference  that  whenever  they  bobbed 
up  it  gave  us  a  shock  of  surprise. 

The  night  after  my  election  I  did  not  sleep  until  I  had  out¬ 
lined  my  presidential  address  for  the  next  year,  and  also  planned 
that  pleasant  and  innocent  revenge  on  Mr.  Letchworth,  of  which 
I  have  told  in  the  story  of  my  first  Conference. 

New  Orleans  and  Toronto 

The  year  1897  was  that  of  the  most  exciting  of  my  Conference 
adventures.  The  New  Orleans  delegates,  especially  Michel  Hey- 


314 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


mann  who  had  been  a  faithful  attendant  for  many  years,  had 
frequently  begged  us  to  come  to  the  Crescent  City.  But  Confer¬ 
ence  meetings  are  usually  held  about  Midsummer  and  people 
dreaded  the  far  Southern  climate.  In  1896,  the  invitation  was 
vainly  repeated  and  after  the  decision  for  Toronto  was  an¬ 
nounced,  was  re-iterated  in  a  new  form;  we  were  asked  to  visit 
them  for  a  short  extra  session  in  the  Spring.  So  in  1897,  we  held 
two  conferences;  one  of  three  days  in  March,  in  New  Orleans, 
convening  the  day  following  Mardi  Gras;  and  one  of  the  usual 
seven  days  duration,  in  Toronto  in  July. 

Only  about  ninety  people  from  the  North  and  East  went  to 
New  Orleans,  and  the  attendance  from  Texas,  Alabama  and  Mis¬ 
sissippi  was  very  disappointing;  but  the  Conference  had  a  good 
local  attendance  and  won  many  Southern  friends,  both  for  itself 
and  the  interests  it  stands  for.  Its  net  results  were  beneficial 
to  the  city.  But  the  dominating  influences  of  old  fashioned  and 
sectarian  charity  are  strong.  There  is  a  little  leaven,  but  it  will 
be  long  ere  the  whole  lump  is  leavened. 

It  was  an  interesting  sign  of  the  advance  of  social  work,  that 
when  the  Conference  met  for  the  second  time  in  New  Orleans, 
in  May  1920,  there  was  a  large  audience  of  people  from  all  over 
the  country,  and  a  degree  of  attention  from  the  citizens  that  was 
very  gratifying. 

At  the  New  Orleans  meeting  as  president  I  abolished  one 
rather  annoying  custom,  that  of  allowing  discussions  to  be  inter¬ 
rupted  by  the  injection  of  notices  and  invitations  to  receptions 
and  institutions.  This  had  grown  until  it  was  a  serious  evil  and 
I  determined  the  time  had  come  to  abate  it.  Notices  have  to  be 
given,  and  given  in  a  way  to  be  heeded;  they  are  important 
enough  to  have  a  place  of  their  own.  When  I  became  full-time 
secretary  I  made  the  giving  of  notices  a  specialty  and  developed 
it  almost  into  a  fine  art.  On  one  occasion  a  transient  visitor  was 
heard  to  say,  to  a  friend  who  wanted  to  leave  the  meeting  because 
a  prosy  speaker  had  poor  terminal  facilities ;  “no  let’s  wait  and 
hear  that  man  give  out  the  notices”.  In  fact  one  friend  said  I 
had  missed  my  calling,  I  ought  to  have  been  a  monologue  artist. 

There  was  a  tragic  incident  in  connection  with  the  New 
Orleans  meeting  which  excited  our  sympathies.  Robert  Treat 
Paine  had  come  to  the  meeting  leaving  his  wife  apparently  in 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


315 


perfect  health.  On  the  second  day  he  had  a  wire  telling  that 
she  was  very  ill,  even  in  danger  of  death.  The  fast  train  for  the 
North  had  left  a  few  minutes  before  the  telegram  came.  Mr. 
Paine  ordered  a  special  train  for  Boston;  everything  the  roads 
could  do  to  speed  it  was  done ;  but  he  arrived  too  late  to  see  his 
beloved  partner  alive.  The  pathetic  figure  of  that  noble  man 
sitting  alone  in  the  train  as  it  speeded  over  the  rails;  receiving 
telegraphic  bulletins  at  every  division  point  of  his  wife’s  condi¬ 
tion  as  it  steadily  grew  worse;  was  one  that  stirred  the  hearts 
of  those  of  us  who  knew  him  well  and  revered  him  highly;  and 
the  news  that  she  had  passed  away  before  he  reached  her  side 
was  received  with  very  deep  regret. 

Toronto  in  July  has  many  attractions,  I  had  lived  in  Ontario 
and  was  married  there,  although  in  the  intervening  twenty-five 
years  most  of  my  old  friends  were  gone.  But  there  was  a  spe¬ 
cial  pleasure  in  returning  to  the  Province  in  the  dignified  char¬ 
acter  of  president  of  the  National  Conference.  My  wife  went 
with  me  and  helped  in  the  social  life  of  the  meeting,  and  when 
it  was  over  we  took  a  brief  vacation,  revisiting  places  of  which 
we  had  happy  memories  of  the  long  ago,  we  had  quite  a  senti¬ 
mental  journey. 

In  reviewing  the  old  Conferences,  the  most  interesting  memo¬ 
ries  are  of  those  in  which  some  important  new  notes  were 
sounded,  leading  to  developments  of  new  features  of  social  work. 

I  have  alluded  to  the  friendly  relations  between  the  Confer¬ 
ence  and  the  settlements  which  were  begun  in  1894,  and  strongly 
re-enforced  in  1897.  Several  other  new  developments  came  this 
year,  some  of  which  were  transitory,  but  others  had  permanent 
effects  upon  the  Conference  and  upon  social  work  in  general. 
Among  these  by  far  the  most  significant  was  the  idea  of  estab¬ 
lishing  schools  for  social  workers.  There  was  a  time  when  the 
would-be  lawyer  or  doctor,  served  an  apprenticeship  under  a 
master  of  his  craft.  Now  we  have  schools  of  Law  and  Medicine 
and  without  them  the  professions  would  make  little  progress.  If 
social  work  is  to  be  a  profession,  new  workers  must  have  a  wider 
and  more  systematic  preparation  than  they  can  get  by  serving 
in  a  humble  capacity  under  some  experienced  secretary;  or  at 
any  rate  some  training  they  may  get  more  readily. 


31(5 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


At  the  Toronto  meeting,  Mary  E.  Richmond  read  a  paper  on 
“The  Need  of  a  Training  School  in  Applied  Philanthropy”.  She 
gave  the  credit  of  the  original  idea  to  Miss  Anna  L.  Dawes,  to 
whom  it  came  during  a  vain  search  for  a  suitable  superintendent 
for  the  charitable  society  of  a  small  city.  Although  it  seemed  at 
the  moment,  in  the  rush  and  bustle  of  the  Conference,  to  excite 
little  interest,  this  paper  had  a  great  and  speedy  effect. 

Edward  T.  Devine  has  long  been  recognized  as  among  the 
most  forceful  clear-sighted  and  enterprising  of  our  leaders.  He 
has  a  specialty  in  which  he  is  unique.  Socrates  said  of  himself, 
that  he  was  engaged  in  the  profession  of  the  midwifery  of  ideas ; 
that  it  was  his  business  to  help  people  give  birth  to  their 
thoughts.  One  of  Devine’s  useful  services,  in  which  he  leads  us 
all,  is  a  sort  of  midwifery  of  social  movements,  committees,  asso¬ 
ciations,  agencies  of  various  sorts,  which  have  the  common  object 
of  taking  from  weak  shoulders  burdens  too  heavy  for  them  to 
bear.*  He  caught  the  vision  of  the  training  school  and  backed 
by  Robert  W.  deForest;  who  has  for  his  social  specialty  the  dis¬ 
covery  of  men  who  can  do  things,  setting  them  to  work  doing 
them,  and  then  giving  them  whole  hearted  support;  a  year  later 
organized  the  six-weeks  summer  school  of  philanthropy  in  New 
York;  which  has  resulted  not  only  in  the  great  school  for  social 
workers  of  that  city,  but  has  been  the  precursor  of  many  more 
of  the  same  kind. 

Another  idea;  new  to  the  Conference  but  fifty  years  old  in 
Paris;  recognized  for  eight  years  in  London;  and  for  several 
years  by  the  American  Neurological  Association  and  the  Medico- 
Psychological  Society;  was  that  of  the  after-care  of  the  insane. 
This  was  presented  in  a  paper  by  Dr.  Richard  Dewey,  then  of 
Wauwatosa,  Wis.,  formerly  of  Kankakee,  Ill.,  where  he  had  made 
the  state  hospital  a  model  for  the  Nation.  His  paper  was  entitled 
“The  Destitute  Convalescent”. 

The  idea  of  after-care  was  taken  up  by  the  N.  Y.  State  Chari¬ 
ties  Aid  Association  under  another  constructive  leader,  Homer 
Folks.  As  the  beginning  of  that  work  was  aided  by  the  school 
of  philanthropy  while  I  was  director,  the  story  of  that  develop- 

*See  in  the  proceedings  for  1905,  page  625,  Devine’s  speech  on  being 
elected  president  of  the  Conference.  I  wish  Devine,  or  someone  for  him, 
would  write  for  us  the  story  of  his  brilliantly  useful  life,  maybe  when  he 
retires  at  seventy-five  he  will  do  it. 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


317 


ment  will  be  told  later  in  my  book,  as  an  adventure  in  social 
education.  The  plan  of  after-care  for  the  insane  was  approved 
in  other  states,  besides  New  York  and  at  least  one  Board  of  State 
Charities,  and  perhaps  more,  have  made  it  a  regular  part  of  their 
work,  with  great  benefit  to  the  convalescent  insane  and  much 
advantage  to  the  states  and  relief  to  their  hospitals. 

An  unwritten  law  of  the  Conference,  specially  binding  on  the 
president  as  program-maker,  was  that  efforts  must  be  made  to 
arouse  local  interest  in  the  cities  which  are  visited;  to  discover 
any  line  of  social  welfare  with  which  our  hosts,  or  any  of  them 
are  vitally  concerned,  so  that  it  might  be  well  presented  in  the 
program.  There  was  in  Toronto  a  large  and  influential  single 
tax  club.  The  Canadians  have  done  more  than  Henry  George’s 
fellow  citizens  to  carry  out  his  great  reform.  There  are  thriving 
cities,  especially  in  the  N.  W.  provinces,  which  have  realized  the 
advantage  of  a  law  which  promotes  the  creation  of  plentiful 
housing  for  all,  and  discourages  the  grasping,  real-estate  specu¬ 
lators,  who  try  to  get  rich  thru  the  exertions  of  less  selfish  or 
more  enterprising  people.  As  soon  as  the  club  heard  we  were 
coming  to  talk ;  as  they  interpreted  our  program ;  about  relieving 
the  poor;  they  demanded  that  their  theories  of  abolishing  pov¬ 
erty;  which  they  conceived  would  be  one  effect  of  the  single  tax, 
should  be  heard. 

I  was  all  the  more  sympathetic  with  the  club’s  demand 
because  an  ardent  Henry  Georgeite  myself.  Now  the  only  way 
to  get  a  subject  before  the  Conference,  after  the  general  features 
of  the  program  have  been  outlined  by  the  nominating  committee 
at  last  year’s  session;  is  to  have  it  adopted  by  one  of  the  com¬ 
mittees;  the  only  one  on  the  list  which  could  possibly  father  a 
paper  on  “The  Abolition  of  Poverty”  was  that  on  charity  organi¬ 
zation  in  cities,  and  I  told  the  chairman  of  the  club’s  demand. 

The  chairman  opposed  the  intrusion  as  he  called  it,  and  I  had 
much  ado  to  convince  him  that  we  must  not  deny  the  request. 
I  argued  that  tho  we  are  greatly  concerned  with  organizing 
relief,  we  profess  to  be  still  more  eager  for  prevention ;  and  here 
was  a  respectable  local  group  who  thought  they  knew ;  not  merely 
how  to  prevent;  but  how  to  abolish  the  chief  evil  we  were  fight¬ 
ing;  who  certainly  ought  to  be  heard.  He  very  reluctantly  gave 
in  to  my  urgency  provided  I  would  find  him  a  good  speaker. 


318 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


With  the  help  of  Mrs.  Barrows  who  was  then,  and  for  many 
years  our  official  reporter  and  editor;  I  did  my  best  to  induce 
some  of  the  prominent  single-tax  men  to  come  to  Toronto.  I 
tried  Bolton  Hall  and  William  Lloyd  Garrison  without  avail. 
They  thought  twenty  minutes,  which  was  all  I  could  offer  them, 
too  short  a  time  in  which  to  produce  any  effect  in  what  they 
called  “the  enemy’s  country”.  I  told  them  twenty  minutes  was 
only  the  beginning;  that  if  they  sounded  the  right  note  a  dis¬ 
cussion  was  sure  to  follow ;  that  I  should  hold  the  gavel  and  be 
too  much  in  sympathy  with  them  to  use  it  hastily,  if  only  they 
captured  the  audience.  I  reminded  them  that  Moody  used  to 
declare  that  there  are  no  conversions  after  twenty  minutes.  I 
said  if  an  enemy  of  mine  would  give  me  twenty  minutes  in  his 
country  I  would  ask  nothing  better.  But  they  did  not  realize 
the  value  of  the  opportunity  I  offered  them;  or  they  were  too 
faint-hearted  or  indifferent;  and  I  had  to  give  them  up.* 

Then  I  wrote  to  the  Toronto  single  taxers  of  my  failure  with 
their  big  guns,  and  told  them  if  they  could  find  an  acceptable 
speaker  they  should  have  twenty  minutes  to  abolish  poverty  in. 
They  named  Rev.  S.  S.  Craig,  one  of  their  members,  an  ardent 
enough  believer,  but  with  little  magnetism  and  a  distinctively 
pulpit  voice;  his  speech  elicited  no  discussion  and  was  a  great 
disappointment.  However  “Abolition  of  Poverty”  got  into  the 
Proceedings  and  when  I  compiled  the  cumulative  index  of  thirty- 
three  volumes,  in  1905,  the  first  line  on  the  first  page  was  “Abo¬ 
lition  of  Poverty,  The,  Craig,  S.  S.,  97,  272”.  Believers  in  tax 
reform,  as  a  great  social  need,  tried  several  times  to  get  the  Con¬ 
ference  interested,  notably  at  Cleveland  in  1912;  and  we  have 
often  had  side-meetings  on  the  subject,  but  this  most  positive 
and  most  certain  of  all  preventive  measures,  is  still  too  much  in 
advance  of  social  thought,  and  presents  too  much  danger  to  the 
interests  who  rule  our  country  for  their  own  benefit,  to  gain  its 
due  recognition. 

In  a  previous  chapter  I  have  told  a  part  of  the  story  of  my 
efforts  at  Toronto  to  promote  sociability  among  the  Conference 
delegates.  I  set  this  before  me  as  a  chief  duty  of  a  president,  I 
stressed  the  idea  that  social  work  ought  to  be  done  socially,  and 

““Twenty  years  later,  Mr.  Hall  came  to  the  Conference  at  Pittsburgh 
and  read  a  paper  on  his  favorite  topic. 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


319 


with  the  help  of  my  wife  I  really  made  same  success.  It  helped  a 
little  with  the  Canadian  delegates  that  Mrs.  Johnson  had  been 
born  among  them,  and  my  own  English  nativity  was  of  value  in 
the  Dominion. 

The  Association  of  Officers  of  the  Schools  for  the  Feeble- 
Minded,  or  as  we  often  called  ourselves,  “The  Feeble-Minded 
Superintendents”,  was  to  hold  its  meeting  at  the  Ontario 
School,  at  Orillia,  immediately  after  the  National  Conference. 
Here  we  found  some  old  friends  and  made  many  new  and  pleas¬ 
ant  friendships.  The  whole  adventure  was  one  of  the  most 
agreeable  of  my  life. 

In  the  Empire  City,  1898 

New  York  may  have  some  sad  social  defects,  but  it  is  emphat¬ 
ically  the  center  of  the  social  movements  of  the  country.  So 
when  an  invitation  came  to  the  Conference  to  hold  its  twenty- 
fifth  session  in  the  great  city  it  was  accepted  with  enthusiasm. 
The  very  first  session  of  the  committee  which  grew  into  the  Con¬ 
ference,  was  held  there  in  1874,  and  occasion  was  taken  to  make 
the  twenty-fifth  a  notable  one.  The  president  was  William 
Rhinelander  Stewart,  of  the  N.  Y.  Board  of  State  Charities  and 
he  discharged  his  duties  as  host  with  thorough  efficiency. 

The  opening  session  was  to  be  on  Wednesday  and  on  the  day 
before,  Mr.  Stewart  invited  a  group  of  ten  conference  men  to 
dine  in  his  house  on  Washington  Square,  which  had  been  in  the 
Rhinelander  family  for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  It  was  a 
stag  party  and  the  host  called  in  nine  notable  gentlemen  as 
convivialists  with  the  conference  folks.  As  I  had  been  president 
the  year  before  I  was  one  of  those  bidden  to  the  feast. 

My  escort  to  the  dining  room  was  Levi  P.  Morton;  Hastings 
Hart,  our  secretary,  went  in  to  dinner  on  the  arm  of  Jacob  D. 
Schiff;  Thomas  Ellison  of  Indiana,  who  was  first  vice-president, 
had  Morris  K.  Jessup  as  a  partner — Whitelaw  Reid,  Seth  Low, 
ex-Mayor  Dailey,  were  among  those  invited  to  meet  us. 

The  dinner  was  by  far  the  most  gorgeous  affair  of  its  kind 
I  have  ever  attended.  This  was  long  before  prohibition,  so  the 
wet-goods  were  of  the  best,  including  some  cognac  laid  down  by 
our  host’s  grandfather,  the  year  the  house  was  built.  When  the 
formal  menu  concluded,  Mr.  Stewart  turned  to  me  (I  was  at  his 


320 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


left)  and  asked  whether  we  Westerners  enjoyed  making  speeches 
at  dinner  parties.  I  assured  him  that  only  a  stern  sense  of  duty 
ever  made  us  speak  in  public  at  all.  He  said  that  was  the  way 
he  felt  about  it,  so  instead  of  formal  speech-making  over  the 
wine,  he  re-arranged  the  seating  twice,  the  first  time  placing  me 
beside  Mr.  Schiff  and  later  by  Whitelaw  Reid,  with  each  of  whom 
I  had  an  interesting  conversation,  although  as  our  host  intro¬ 
duced  me  to  each  of  them  as  a  “feeble-minded  expert”,  I  had  to 
talk  shop;  while  I  had  sat  beside  Mr.  Morton  our  converse  had 
chiefly  concerned  pure  bred  cattle,  about  which  we  were  equally 
enthusiastic. 

At  the  opening  meeting,  because  I  was  the  latest  ex-president, 
I  was  called  on  to  respond  to  the  address  of  welcome.  Carnegie 
Hall  was  crowded  with  the  best  people  (or  rather  the  most 
prominent)  of  the  city;  on  the  platform  was  the  most  notable 
group  we  ever  had  together.  Joseph  Choate,  leader  of  the  New 
York  Bar,  presided ;  Seth  Low,  then  president  of  Columbia,  made 
the  address  of  welcome;  Archbishop  Corrigan  and  Bishop  Pot¬ 
ter  each  made  a  speech.  On  the  stage  were  the  gentlemen  with 
whom  we  had  dined  on  the  previous  evening  and  thirty  or  forty 
others  of  similar  distinction;  of  the  many  I  remember  Richard 
Watson  Gilder,  Charlton  T.  Lewis,  J.  Kennedy  Tod,  ex-Governor 
Flower,  John  S.  Kennedy,  Everett  P.  Wheeler  and  Isaac  N. 
Seligman.  There  were  no  ladies  on  the  platform,  they  filled  the 
boxes. 

Jeffrey  R.  Brackett  of  Maryland  was  to  speak  for  the  South, 
and  Frank  B.  Sanborn  of  Massachusetts  for  the  East;  my 
response  was  to  be  from  the  West.  Like  every  other  would-be 
orator,  I  had  long  craved  a  chance  at  a  New  York  audience,  and 
now  it  had  come.  It  was  no  wonder  that  the  great  occasion  and 
the  array  of  intellect  on  the  platform  made  me  desperately 
nervous.  About  the  middle  of  Mr.  Low’s  speech  I  had  an  attack 
of  stage  fright  so  intensely  severe  that  it  more  than  paid  me  out 
for  the  nonchalance  with  which  I  had  faced  hundreds  of  audi¬ 
ences  before,  and  with  which  I  have  met  thousands  since.  The 
speaker’s  voice  changed  in  my  ear  to  a  distant  rumble;  I  felt  my 
heart  beating  like  a  hammer ;  my  mouth  went  dry ;  every  vestige 
of  my  carefully  prepared  speech  vanished  from  my  mind;  and  I 
forgot  all  about  the  notes  in  my  pocket. 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904  321 

While  I  was  in  that  condition  Mr.  Low  concluded ;  there  was 
a  roar  of  applause  and  I  heard  Mr.  Choate  announce  that  the 
first  response  to  the  address  would  be  by  Mr.  Johnson  of  Indiana, 
president  of  last  year’s  Conference,  who  would  speak  for  the 
West.  As  I  rose  to  my  feet,  my  knees  trembling  violently;  the 
story  of  the  old  lady  who  had  difficulty  in  living  up  to  her  blue 
china,  flashed  on  my  mind  and  I  said  that  we  simple  folk  from 
the  South  and  West  had  expected  great  things  of  New  York  and 
of  Mr.  Stewart,  but  (waving  my  hand  to  the  platform)  we  were 
hardly  prepared  for  such  a  magnificent  array  of  blue  china,  to 
whose  level  we  must  live  up  for  a  whole  week.  The  audience 
caught  on  and  laughed  and  clapped.  Some  of  the  dignitaries  on 
the  platform  laughed  and  pointed  at  themselves  and  each  other, 
and  during  the  laughter  and  applause;  which  lasted  all  of  two 
minutes ;  I  recovered  myself  and  remembered  the  things  I  had 
prepared  to  say. 

At  the  concluding  session  of  the  Conference,  Mr.  Stewart 
insisted  on  getting  all  the  ex-presidents  in  attendance  to  sit  on 
the  platform,  and  before  his  closing  speech  he  called  on  each  of 
them.  There  were  eleven  of  us  in  a  row  and  I  came  last.  I 
reminded  them  of  my  comparison  of  Mr.  Stewart’s  distinguished 
friends  on  the  platform  at  Carnegie,  to  a  shelf  of  blue  china  to 
whose  level  we  must  rise  for  a  week ;  and  congratulated  him  that, 
at  the  closing  meeting,  he  had  exhibited  such  a  delightful  collec¬ 
tion  of  antiques,  to  which  he  too  would  belong  when  the  Confer¬ 
ence  should  adjourn  in  a  few  minutes. 

There  were  not  many  new  notes  struck  at  the  New  York  Con¬ 
ference.  It  was  chiefly  a  glorified  love  feast.  But  many  new 
and  improved  connections  were  made.  Catholic,  Protestant  and 
Jew,  were  brought  nearer  to  each  other.  There  was  much  frank 
discussion  and  many  theories  were  weighed  in  the  balance.  The 
attention  given  to  our  Conference  by  social  workers  of  every 
kind  in  the  great  city,  helped  to  establish  it  more  firmly  than 
ever,  in  its  place  in  the  Nation. 

Topeka  and  Cincinnati,  1899-1900 

The  Conference  of  1899  was  held  at  Topeka,  Kan.,  and  I  did 
not  attend,  so  I  have  no  adventure  there  to  tell  about.  When  we 


009 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


met  in  Cincinnati,  in  1900,  with  my  friend  Charles  Richmond 
Henderson,  as  president,  I  was  merely  a  private  in  the  ranks. 
T  was  usually  a  member  of  a  committee  and  had  part  in  some 
discussion,  but  T  felt  myself  always  a  learner  and  attended  every 
general  session  and  as  many  of  the  section  meetings  as  possible. 

Washington  a  Second  Time,  1901 

It  was  interesting  at  Washington  to  recall  what  had  occurred 
sixteen  years  before;  to  notice  how  the  Conference  had  grown, 
and  remember  with  gratitude  what  it  had  done  for  me.  As  I 
glance  over  the  proceedings  and  read  again  an  occasional  address 
or  sermon,  I  am  continually  struck  by  finding  the  source  of  some 

idea  or  principle,  which  I  have  used,  both  in  speeches  and  among 
the  things  I  live  by:  that  T  acquired  at  the  meetings,  but  had 
forgotten  where  I  found  them.  Sometimes  I  have  even  imagined 
things  heard  at  the  Conference  and  then  forgotten  by  my  con¬ 
scious  mind:  when  they  have  later  come  out  into  consciousness: 
to  have  been  original  ideas  of  my  own.  I  can  say  after  thirty- 
eight  years,  as  I  said  after  four  or  five,  that  all  my  most  valuable 
knowledge  of  the  principles  of  social  work  has  been  what  T  have 
gained  at  this  great  school,  whose  proceedings  T  have  studied  and 
used,  more,  I  think  than  any  other  man. 

John  M.  Glenn,  presided  over  the  Conference  at  Washington, 
and  with  ultra  modesty,  declined  to  make  a  presidential  address, 
but  called  on  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Smith  to  do  it  for  him.  Most  of  us 
who  knew  Mr.  Glenn’s  sterling  qualities,  regretted  his  decision. 
We  were  quite  certain  that  any  address  he  would  make  would 
rank  up  well  among  others  of  the  kind.  We  had  heard  D*r. 
Smith  before  and  knew  the  measure  of  his  mind  fairly  well. 
His  address  was  a  good  one,  a  man  of  his  ability  could  not  make 
any  other,  but  it  was  not  our  president’s  voice,  nor  our  presi¬ 
dent’s  thought. 

It  was  good  at  Washington  to  have  my  dear  friend  Zilpha 
Smith  as  chairman  of  the  committee  on  charity  organization.  If 
women  had  been  regarded  by  the  Conference  in  1884,  as  they 
were  in  1900,  she  instead  of  I,  would  have  been  chairman  in  1885. 
Tt  has  been  bv  a  slow  and  tedious  approach,  that  the  Conference 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


has  come  to  practice  the  principles  of  equality  which  it  has 
always  professed. 

When  a  society  claims  to  be  essentially  democratic;  to  make 
no  distinction  of  sect  or  sex  among  its  membership;  and  yet 
restricts  all  its  principal  offices  and  honors  to  those  of  one  sex 
and  of  a  few  religious  denominations;  real  democrats  look  on  it 
with  some  suspicion.  I  was  never  satisfied  with  the  nominating 
committees,  until  they  had  given  us,  as  presidents,  a  Woman,  a 
Catholic  and  a  Jew.  And  when  after  many  Conference  Sermons 
preached  by  Episcopalians,  Methodists,  Baptists,  Presbyterians, 
and  even  Unitarians,  we  had  one  by  a  Catholic  Bishop,  and 
another  by  a  Jewish  Rabbi;  I  was  able  to  feel  that  the  democ¬ 
racy — not  toleration  but  recognition  of  equality — which  I  liked 
to  proclaim  in  making  speeches  for  the  promotion  of  the  Confer¬ 
ence,  was  real. 

The  platform  of  the  Conference  is  not  one  of  toleration; 
people  of  various  sects  and  opinions  share  it,  not  by  ignoring 
diversity  but  by  recognizing  it.  I  love  to  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  my  Jewish  brother  because  he  is  a  Jew.  I  lift  my 
end  of  the  log  the  more  cheerfully  because  my  fellow  worker  who 
is  toting  the  other  is  a  Catholic.  I  despise  the  idea  of  “tolera¬ 
tion’’  and  refuse  to  go  anywhere,  or  join  any  society,  where  I  am 
“tolerated”. 

At  Washington,  Jeffrey  Brackett  was  chairman  of  the  nomi¬ 
nating  committee  and  asked  me  to  suggest  a  president  for  the 
next  year;  he  said,  “We  are  going  to  Detroit  and  for  the  Middle- 
West  we  want  one  of  your  good  Indiana  men;  who  is  the  best?” 
I  named  Timothy  Nicholson.  Now  Timothy,  though  often  attend¬ 
ing,  had  been  seldom  heard.  His  theory  of  participating  in  dis¬ 
cussions  was  to  keep  silent  unless  the  thing  which  needed  saying 
was  not  being  said  by  someone  else,  and  Jeffrey  questioned  his 
ability.  But  I  knew  the  man,  what  sterling  qualities,  what 
knowledge,  wisdom,  balanced  judgment,  fairness,  insight,  sym¬ 
pathy  and  absolute  integrity  of  thought  were  his;  what  ability 
of  leadership  he  had  shown  for  fifty  years  past  among  his  own 
people.  In  choosing  him  they  gave  the  Conference  one  of  the 
worthiest  in  its  long  line  of  worthy  presidents. 

There  have  been  few  so  useful  citizens  in  Indiana  or  any  other 
state,  as  this  grand,  old  Quaker.  Few  who  have  given  their  best 


324 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


services  to  the  community  in  such  Quaker  measure.*  To  have 
known  him  well  and  to  have  gained  his  confidence  and  lasting 
friendship,  are  among  the  best  of  the  many  good  things  which 
came  to  me  out  of  my  adventure  with  the  Board  of  State  Chari¬ 
ties  of  Indiana. 

Homer  Folks  was  chosen  secretary  in  Washington  to  suc¬ 
ceed  Hastings  Hart,  but  soon  after  the  Conference  he  was 
appointed  Commissioner  of  Charities  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  which  was  just  then  enjoying  a  reform  administration.  He 
filled  the  position  with  marked  success  and  made  many  salutary 
changes  which  have  had  lasting  beneficial  results.  But  the  exact¬ 
ing  duties  of  the  office  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  resign  the 
Conference  secretaryship.  Joseph  P.  Byers  was  appointed  by  the 
executive  committee,  and  continued  as  secretary  until  after  the 
Conference  of  1904,  when  I  was  elected.  Mr.  Byers  was  one  of  us 
from  the  Middle  West,  and  one  of  the  few  men  of  that  day  who 
had  been  a  social  worker  all  his  active  life,  beginning  as  clerk, 
and  later  secretary,  of  the  State  Board  of  Ohio,  and  having  been 
superintendent  of  the  Indiana  Beformatory ;  warden  of  the 
famous  Cherry  Hill  prison  in  Philadelphia  and  for  many  years 
highly  successful  as  head  of  the  House  of  Refuge  on  Randalls 
Island  N.  Y.  Because  I  had  known  him  long  and  intimately,  I 
was  glad  to  have  him  as  a  workfellow  many  years  later  when  we 
began  the  committee  on  Provision  for  the  Feeble-Minded.  He 
and  I  had  many  points  of  sympathy  besides  our  Conference 
experiences;  having  done  similar  state  board  work,  and  both  of 
us  having  suffered  under  Winfield  Durbin,  in  Indiana,  “I  indeed, 
justly  but  this  man  has  done  nothing  amiss”. 

Detroit  for  a  Second  Time 

Mr.  Nicholson's  Conference  at  Detroit  was  marked  among 
other  things  by  the  presence,  as  preacher  of  the  Conference  ser¬ 
mon,  of  a  dignitary  of  the  Catholic  church,  Bishop  Spalding  of 
Peoria  Ill.,  who  gave  us  one  of  the  great  Conference  discourses. 
That  a  Quaker  president  should  deliberately  choose  a  Catholic 
Bishop  to  preach  for  him,  is  a  striking  evidence  of  the  spirit  of 

♦“Quaker  measure”  is  a  familiar  term  in  Indiana.  It  means  “good 
measure  pressed  down,  shaken  together  and  running  over”.  (See  Luke 
VI.  38.)  It  is  a  colloquialism  which  throws  an  interesting  side-light  on 
what  we  Hoosiers  think  of  our  Quaker  neighbors. 


Conferences  from  1893  to  1904 


325 


the  Conference  and  the  spirit  of  the  man.  Six  years  later  a 
Catholic  president  showed  the  same  fine  spirit,  when  he  had  me 
choose  a  Baptist  preacher  for  the  same  high  duty. 

Atlanta  in  1903 

The  Conference  at  Atlanta  in  1903  with  Mr.  Robert  W. 
deForest  of  New  York  as  president,  was  by  far  the  best  attended 
and  most  influential  that  had  been  held  in  the  South,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  the  one  in  Baltimore,  which  hardly  seems 
like  a  Southern  city.  This  was  the  last  one  I  was  to  attend  as 
the  superintendent  of  a  state  institution.  My  resignation  had 
been  presented ;  and  if  I  had  not  been  chairman  of  the  committee 
on  feeble-minded,  my  board  of  trustees  would  not  have  sent  me. 
The  name  of  the  committee  this  year  was  “The  Segregation  of 
Defectives”.  The  report  had  been  considered  by  all  the  commit¬ 
tee  members  and  approved  by  all  but  one.  That  one,  a  woman 
member,  who  was  a  member  of  the  state  board  of  Missouri,  ques¬ 
tioned  our  treatment  of  the  topic  of  sterilization.  The  majority 
report  stressed  segregation  and  the  colony  plan,  and  questioned ; 
though,  it  did  not  condemn;  not  only  the  practicability  but  the 
ethics  of  sterilization.  The  dissenting  member  took  the  opposite 
view  and  I  insisted  she  must  present  a  minority  report.  When 
positive  views  are  expressed  in  a  report,  if  there  is  a  minority 
who  differ  their  views  should  be  given  as  clearly  as  those  of  the 
majority.  The  Conference  does  not  decide  anything;  but  a  strong 
report  has  the  effect  on  many  people  of  a  decision  unless  it  is 
questioned;  and  that  not  merely  in  the  discussion  which  often 
escapes  attention. 

The  Conference  attracted  many  of  the  Southern  leaders  in 
social  work.  One  of  its  most  interesting  sessions  was  devoted 
to  child  labor,  which,  because  of  the  cotton  industry,  was  a  liv¬ 
ing,  almost  a  burning,  question  in  Georgia,  South  Carolina  and 
some  other  states. 

At  the  time  there  was  a  movement  on  foot  in  Georgia,  for 
child-labor  legislation  which  was  at  the  debatable  stage.  A  series 
of  papers  by  Jane  Addams,  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  Florence 
Kelley,  Frederick  L.  Hoffman,  Hon.  Hoke  Smith  and  Rev.  C.  B. 
Wilmer,  contains  some  of  the  most  convincing  arguments  on  the 
subject  which  have  ever  been  presented. 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


Gardner  Murphy’s  address  was  particularly  eloquent  and 
convincing.  His  position  as  a  leader  in  Southern  affairs,  was 
unquestioned,  and  he  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  National 
Child  Labor  Society.  Hoke  Smith  was  also  a  leader.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  debate  had  much  to  do  in  influencing 
public  opinion  in  favor  of  the  new  laws. 

A  similar  result  can  hardly  be  claimed  in  the  case  of  the 
feeble-minded,  although  no  doubt  a  little  seed  was  sown.  But 
it  was  seventeen  years  later  before  the  legislature  of  Georgia 
created  a  small  institution. 

Portland,  Maine 

When  the  Conference  met  in  1904  at  Portland,  Me.,  with  my 
old  friend,  Jeffrey  Brackett  as  president  I  was  unable  to  attend. 
I  had  left  the  Indiana  State  School,  and  was  adventuring  at 
working  for  money. 

Several  notable  things  occurred  there,  the  most  notable  for 
me  being  my  election  as  secretary  of  the  Conference,  to  which  I 
was  thenceforth  to  devote  my  energy  for  the  next  nine  years. 


/ 


Chapter  Five 


ADVENTURES  AS  SECRETARY  OF  THE  CONFERENCE 

Second  Series,  1905-1907 

When  I  left  the  school  for  feeble-minded,  I  thought  I  was 
bidding  farewell  to  social  work  as  a  vocation.  I  had  made  no 
provision  for  old  age,  except  that  I  had  reared  a  family  of  chil¬ 
dren,  whom  I  now  esteem,  though  I  hardly  did  so  then,  the  best 
investment  a  man  can  make.  I  was  offered  what  seemed  a  good 
business  opportunity  in  a  new  industry,  and  decided  to  embrace 
it  and  thenceforth  for  my  working  life,  to  be  a  plain  business 
man,  and  incidentally  make  a  little  money. 

But  twenty  years  of  work  for  other  people’s  interests,  had 
made  me  less  fit  to  work  for  my  own  than  I  had  been  in  1882, 
and  my  fine  scheme  was  a  disastrous  failure. 

In  the  early  summer  of  1904,  when  the  world  looked  blacker 
than  almost  ever  before,  I  had  a  letter  from  Edward  T.  Devine, 
offering  the  position  of  associate  director  of  the  N.  Y.  School  of 
Philanthropy,  which  was  to  be  developed  from  its  original  six- 
weeks  summer  work,  to  a  'more  formidable  affair.  He  suggested 
that  the  duty  might  be  combined  with,  and  the  inadequate  salary 
supplemented  by,  the  position  of  secretary  of  the  National  Con¬ 
ference,  as  Joseph  P.  Byers,  then  secretary,  was  resigning,  and 
he  was  sure  the  Conference  would  be  glad  to  elect  me. 

The  offer  was  tempting ;  but  I  felt  that  the  man  who  had  con¬ 
ducted  the  summer  school  for  six  years  should  be  promoted  and  I 
told  Devine  so.  He  replied  that  what  I  suggested  had  been  well 
considered  and  that  the  man  I  mentioned  would  not  be  chosen. 
The  Conference  was  in  session  at  Portland,  Maine,  and  the  day 
after  Devine’s  second  letter  I  was  offered  the  secretaryship  by 
wire.  I  gladly  accepted  the  two  positions  and  returned  for  the 
rest  of  my  active  life,  to  the  profession  to  which  I  belonged. 

The  arrangement  was  that  one-third  of  my  time  and  energy 
was  to  be  given  to  the  Conference,  and  two-thirds  to  the  school, 

(327) 


328 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


and  the  salaries  were  arranged  accordingly.  It  might  have 
seemed  a  formidable  undertaking  for  a  worn-out  man  of  fifty- 
seven.  But  I  knew  the  Conference  thoroughly,  having  been  a 
member  for  twenty-one  years,  and  its  secretary  for  four;  and  I 
had  had  some  experience  as  instructor  with  the  summer  school. 
Then  the  lines  of  work  were  parallel ;  the  period  of  greatest 
stress  of  Conference  work  would  be  during  the  school  vacations ; 
it  seemed  a  possible  and  happy  combination ;  and  I  began  life 
anew ;  the  world  once  more  looked  bright. 

The  retiring  secretary  was  a  faithful  friend  of  long  standing. 
The  business  affairs  of  the  Conference  were  in  good  shape;  the 
correspondence  necessary  for  the  next  year’s  meeting,  was  well 
begun;  the  transfer  of  duties  was  easily  made,  and  T  began  my 
work  under  favorable  auspices. 

The  meeting  for  1905  was  to  be  in  Portland,  Ore.,  and  Rev. 
S.  G.  Smith,  of  Minnesota,  was  president.  He  was  a  man  of 
strong  character  and  large  experience  in  social  work.  He  fully 
understood  how  to  make  a  program  and  knew  it  was  his  duty; 
so  I  had  no  anxiety  on  that  score. 

During  my  experience  as  secretary,  I  had  several  varieties  of 
presidents  to  work  with ;  one  kind  knew  his  work  and  did  it,  only 
asking  from  me  an  occasional  word  of  encouragement,  since  he 
needed  little  advice.  Among  these  I  count  McCulloch  in  1891, 
Smith  in  1905,  Devine  in  1900  (though  his  absence  for  a  month 
or  two  before  the  Conference  met  had  to  be  provided  for),  Butler 
in  1907,  and  Folks  in  1911.  Another  kind  left  as  much  as  pos¬ 
sible  to  the  secretary,  giving  me  a  free  hand  and  cheerfully 
assuming  responsibility  for  all  I  did  in  his  name.  The  perfect 
example  of  this  second  kind  was  Reed  in  1892,  who  made  me  do 
it  all,  though  at  that  time,  my  office,  like  his  own,  was  unpaid. 
Mulry  in  1908,  was  almost  as  good.  He  was  a  very  satisfactory 
president,  from  the  secretary’s  stand  point.  He  had  a  good  sense 
of  responsibility  and  a  generous  and  whole-souled  frankness  in 
asking  for  and  acknowledging  all  the  help  I  could  give  him. 
Judge  Mack  in  1912,  occupied  a  median  position ;  he  had  strong 
and  clear  opinions  of  his  own ;  and  though  he  called  on  me  for  a 
fair  share  of  the  work  of  preparation,  he  was  distinctly  the 
maker  of  the  program;  but  our  relations  were  very  cordial. 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907  329 

It  was  a  rare  privilege  to  work  with  Jane  Addams  for  the 
1910  Conference.  She  was  seriously  ill  during  the  spring  of  her 
Conference  year,  and  I  had  the  opportunity  of  relieving  her  of 
much  of  the  detail  which  usually  devolves  on  a  president.  But 
her  clear  brain,  fine  sense  of  values,  and  warm  human  person¬ 
ality  made  association  with  her,  not  only  satisfactory,  from  the 
business  side,  but  a  delightful  social  experience.  Working  with 
Bicknell  for  1909  was  like  going  back  to  Indiana  with  a  trusty 
comrade.  But  for  the  Messina  earthquake,  which  took  him  to 
Italy  on  Red  Cross  business  in  the  spring,  my  work  for  his  Con¬ 
ference  would  have  been  confined  strictly  to  the  duties  of  a 
secretary;  as  it  was,  I  had  many  things  to  do  which  usually  fall 
to  the  lot  of  the  president,  even  choosing  the  preacher  for  the  Con¬ 
ference  sermon,  which  is  always  the  president’s  prerogative. 
But  Bicknell’s  business  promptness  in  answering  letters,  and  his 
clear  insight  of  every  part  of  the  work,  made  my  duties  easy. 

Frank  Tucker,  the  last  president  under  whom  I  worked,  was 
clear-headed  and  positive.  Any  one  working  with  him  is  never 
in  doubt  of  what  is  expected  of  him.  The  only  point  upon  which 
we  differed  was  that  of  economy.  He  several  times  reproached 
me  for  being  niggardly  in  expenditures,  which  he  thought  proper 
and  I  grudged.  On  one  occasion,  he  said,  in  good  humored  pique, 
“oh  damn  your  economy,”  but  our  friendship,  which  was  close 
when  we  began  to  work  together,  was  closer  at  the  end  of  the 
year. 

With  the  single  exception  of  Dr.  Smith,  my  relations  with  my 
presidents  were  never  marred  by  the  slightest  friction.  With 
Dr.  Smith  a  work-fellow  needed  tact,  patience  and  courage,  but 
with  a  reasonable  amount  of  these  qualities,  I  managed  to  get 
through  the  year  without  discord. 

The  Conference  in  Portland,  Oregon 

After  getting  the  correspondence  in  order,  my  first  adventure 
in  1904,  was  to  take  advantage  of  the  Christmas  vacation  of  the 
School  of  Philanthropy,  and  cross  the  continent  from  New  York 
to  Portland,  to  make  the  preliminary  arrangements  for  the  Con¬ 
ference  there.  On  my  way,  I  had  ten  minutes  with  my  family 
on  the  railroad  platform  at  Fort  Wayne,  and  a  brief  interview 
with  Dr.  Smith  between  trains  at  St.  Paul.  I  ate  my  Christmas 


330 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


dinner  on  the  diner  with  the  one  other  passenger  in  the  Pullman 
I  was  in.  We  fraternized  over  a  sumptuous  table  d’hote  meal, 
and  toasted  “absent  friends”  in  brandied  figs,  as  there  was  no 
more  appropriate  drinkable  to  be  had.  My  companion  joined 
his  family  at  Billings,  Mont.,  on  Christmas  afternoon,  and  from 
thence  I  had  the  car  to  myself.  A  brakeman  passing  through 
said  he  saw  I  was  using  my  private  car. 

The  Portland  people  were  responsive  and  hospitable.  I 
renewed  friendships  of  fifteen  years  before,  and  made  some  new 
ones.  Stephen  S.  Wise  was  then  Rabbi  of  the  Jewish  temple,  and 
invited  me  to  his  pulpit  for  the  regular  Friday  evening  service. 
On  Sunday  morning,  which  was  New  Year’s  day,  I  spoke  in  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  the  pastor  declaring  that  the  Conference 
was  so  important  that  he  gladly  yielded  me  his  place,  even  on 
the  special  occasion  of  the  first  Sunday  morning  in  the  year. 
The  weather  was  of  the  usual  northwest  coast  winter  variety. 
It  rained  all  Saturday  and  Sunday  morning,  yet  the  big  church 
was  full.  On  my  expressing  surprise,  the  minister  said  “Oh,  if 
we  stayed  at  home  in  Portland  because  of  rain,  we  should  never 
go  anywhere,”  which  made  me  think  of  my  native  Lancashire, 
where  not  even  a  Sunday  school  picnic  is  deferred  because  of 
rainy  weather. 

We  got  a  fairly  good  local  committee  going;  but  they  did  not 
understand  the  importance  of  publicity,  and  it  was  a  far  cry 
from  New  York  to  Portland;  many  local  needs  were  neglected. 
When  we  went  in  July,  I  called  on  the  editor  of  the  Oregonian, 
the  leading  paper,  with  a  request  for  liberal  reports  of  the  meet¬ 
ings.  He  asked  how  much  space  we  usually  had  on  such  occa¬ 
sions.  When  I  told  him  from  one  to  two  pages  daily,  he  said 
that  must  have  been  in  small  cities ;  and  I  answered  yes,  rather 
small,  such  as  Chicago,  Denver,  Indianapolis  and  New  York. 
But  he  could  not  see  that  we  had  much  news  value  and  would 
not  even  print  the  daily  program  except  at  advertising  rates 
which  we  had  to  pay. 

This  lack  of  publicity  was  one  cause  of  poor  attendance,  pub¬ 
lic  lethargy  was  another,  but  the  chief  cause  was  the  competition 
of  the  Pacific  Coast  Exposition  and  the  American  Medical  Asso¬ 
ciation,  both  of  which  were  in  progress  during  our  Conference. 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907 


331 


There  was  one  very  notable  new  departure  of  the  Conference 
at  Portland,  in  the  work  of  a  committee  on  “Care  of  the  Sick,” 
with  Nathan  Bijur  of  New  York  for  chairman.  When  we  con¬ 
sider  that  sickness  is  by  far  the  greatest  immediate  cause  of  dis¬ 
tress  leading  to  the  need  of  relief,  it  seems  strange  that  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  had  not  earlier  paid  more 
attention  to  this  most  important  branch  of  relief  work.  How¬ 
ever,  the  committee  on  “Care  of  the  Sick”  at  Portland  made 
amends  for  long  neglect  in  a  luminous  and  complete  presenta¬ 
tion  of  the  subject. 

The  great  work  of  the  Anti-Tuberculosis  Society  was  at  its 
beginning.  This  had  been  fostered  by  Edward  T.  Devine ;  it  was 
one  of  his  notable  achievements  in  his  specialty  of  the  “mid¬ 
wifery  of  new  social  movements”  to  which  I  have  already  alluded. 
Another  new  departure  in  health,  especially  in  New  York  City, 
was  the  Visiting  Nursing  Association.  Mr.  Bijur  besides  his 
own  committee  reports  and  papers,  had  two  sub-committees ;  one 
on  tuberculosis,  with  Devinei  as  Chairman,  and  another  on  visit¬ 
ing  nursing  in  the  care  of  Miss  Jane  Elizabeth  Hitchcock. 

Devine’s  report  was  a  masterly  presentation  of  the  needs  of 
the  tubercular,  and  of  the  progress  that  had  been  made  in  meet¬ 
ing  them.  He  had  secured  some  brilliant  papers  by  medical  men. 

Miss  Hitchcock’s  contribution  to  the  literature  of  nursing 
was  equally  valid  and  comprehensive.  Few  groups  of  papers 
ever  presented  at  one  session  by  a  Committee,  have  been  so  timely 
and  valuable  as  those  which  the  Conference  owes  to  Mr.  Bijur. 
It  is  contributions  of  this  kind  which  make  a  file  of  Conference 
proceedings  among  the  most  valuable  of  the  contents  of  a  public 
or  university  library. 

One  other  notable  committee  at  the  Portland  Conference  must 
be  mentioned,  that  on  “Neighborhood  Improvement”.  This  was 
headed  by  Miss  Louise  Montgomery  of  Buffalo,  and  was  almost 
wholly  directed  toward  the  problems  of  Americanization.  This 
aroused  special  interest  among  the  dwellers  on  the  Coast,  in 
view  of  the  Asiatic  immigration,  which  some  of  them  dread,  and 
some  of  them  (who  want  plenty  of  cheap  labor)  encourage.  It 
is  interesting  in  going  to  the  various  sections  of  our  country,  to 
notice  the  attitude  of  local  residents  toward  the  rest  of  us ;  when 
it  comes  to  consideration  of  problems  which  they  fancy  are  spe- 


332 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


cial  to  them.  No  Southerner  believes  a  Northern  man  can  talk 
intelligently  on  the  Negro  problem.  No  Californian  thinks  an 
opinion  on  Chinese  or  Japanese  labor,  coming  from  East  of  the 
Kockies,  is  worth  listening  to.  It’s  the  old  story  of  the  shoe  that 
pinches,  or  the  ox  that  is  gored. 

The  Conference  renders  a  distinct  service  when  it  brings 
people  from  every  section  face  to  face,  to  frankly  discuss  prob¬ 
lems  that  are  felt  as  sectional,  yet  must  be  dealt  with  nationally. 
No  matter  how  radical  may  be  a  man’s  opinion,  lie  seldom 
expresses  it,  at  such  a  gathering  as  the  Conference,  quite  so 
radically  as  he  feels  about  it;  so  speaking  your  mind  not  only 
eases  tension  by  letting  off  steam,  but  actually  leads  to  modera¬ 
tion  of  extreme  views.  The  most  radical  reformer  inclines  a 
little  towards  conservatism  when  given  the  responsibility  of 
administration ;  and  it  is  much  the  same  with  discussion.  To 
listen  to  an  intelligent  earnest-minded  speaker,  expressing  with 
good  temper  and  in  moderate  language,  views  which  differ  rad¬ 
ically  from  your  own,  is  the  first  step  towards  moderation,  and 
that  is  the  second  step  to  harmonious  co-operation. 

There  were  many  other  of  the  papers  and  discussions  of  the 
Portland  Conference  of  equal  value  and  interest  with  the  few 
I  have  mentioned ;  and  the  1905  volume  is  one  of  the  best  of  the 
long  series.  In  reviewing  it  for  my  present  purpose,  sixteen 
years  after  it  was  issued,  I  am  impressed  anew  with  its  time¬ 
liness  and  quality.  The  papers  were  much  more  than  “reports” ; 
they  were  vital  human  documents.  There  are  few  indeed  of  the 
many  volumes  on  social  work  which  are  now  keeping  linotype 
men  busy  either  so  valuable  or  so  interesting  as  is  a  respectable 
proportion  of  the  Conference  proceedings. 

Dr.  Smith  was  the  only  president  during  my  experience  who 
attempted  to  put  across  a  change  in  the  unwritten  law.  He  ruled 
from  the  chair;  after  I  had  made  the  usual  announcement  of  the 
choosing  of  the  nominating  committee  by  the  delegates  and 
instructed  them  when  to  meet;  that  the  committee  could  not 
meet  till  it  was  organized  (by  himself).  This  committee  at  that 
time,  was  the  stronghold  of  democracy  in  the  Conference.  It 
was  appointed  by  the  delegates  by  states,  one  member  from  each, 
and  I  had  the  Conference  with  me  in  standing  by  our  long  estab- 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907  333 

lished  custom  and  declaring  that  it  could  not  organize  until  it 
met,  when  it  would  choose  its  own  chairman. 

Dr.  Smith  had  some  views  regarding  the  future  of  the  Con¬ 
ference,  and  other  things  in  the  Middle  West.  He  had  long  been 
a  member  of  the  Minnesota  Board  of  State  Charities,  which  was 
being  supplanted  by  a  Board  of  Control.  He  wanted  the  Con¬ 
ference  to  give  some  emphatic  recognition  of  the  Boards  of  Con¬ 
trol,  which  he  believed  had  not  been  fairly  estimated  hitherto, 
although,  as  he  thought,  they  were  coming  to  be  the  important 
state  boards,  and  was  particularly  anxious  to  have  a  member  of 
a  Board  of  Control  as  first  vice-president.  His  intentions  were 
good  and  he  succeeded  in  his  endeavors,  altho  not  in  the  way  he 
first  attempted,  but  some  consequences  were  rather  unfortunate. 

The  Conference  had  accepted  an  invitation  to  Philadelphia 
for  the  next  meeting,  and  the  delegates  from  that  city  made  a 
very  earnest  request  for  a  strong  local  man,  in  whom  the  citi¬ 
zens  would  have  confidence,  for  first  vice-president,  and  were 
much  disappointed  when  their  request  was  disregarded. 

i 

The  Guide  and  the  Index 

In  the  course  of  thirty-three  years  the  Conference  had  accu¬ 
mulated  a  large  stock  of  volumes  of  proceedings,  many  thousand 
in  all.  Some  of  these  were  bound  in  cloth,  some  in  paper,  and  a 
great  many  were  in  sheets  in  the  printer’s  warehouse.  I  had 
collected  a  file  of  the  Proceedings  of  my  own,  and  had  long  used 
them  freely.  When  invited  to  speak  on  any  subject  with  which 
the  Conference  has  been  concerned,  I  found  the  easiest  and  best 
way  to  prepare  myself  was  to  read  a  few  addresses  and  discus¬ 
sions  in  the  proceedings.  When  I  went  for  my  first  interview 
with  the  Indiana  Board  of  State  Charities,  I  got  ready  for  them 
by  spending  a  few  hours  studying  state  boards  in  the  proceedings 
of  1887. 

My  predecessors  as  secretary  had  given  some  attention  to 
selling  the  back  numbers,  but  they  had  never  been  able  to  devote 
time  or  effort  to  such  work  as  I  now  could.  At  that  time  the 
present  flood  of  social  work  literature  had  scarcely  begun  to  rise, 
and  the  Conference  proceedings  were  the  best  available  source 
of  information.  I  succeeded  in  turning  many  copies  into  money. 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


334 


When  preparing  a  speech,  I  had  often  used  some  paper  which 
T  knew  was  not  the  best  in  the  proceedings  on  the  subject, 
because  of  the  difficulty  of  finding  in  the  mass  of  poorly  indexed 
volumes  a  better  article  which  I  knew  was  somewhere  among 
them.  I  determined  that  a  cumulative  index  would  add 
immensely  to  the  value  of  a  file  of  proceedings,  and  incidentally 
would  help  the  sales. 

I  decided  to  issue  the  index  in  parts  in  the  Conference  bulle¬ 
tin,  which  we  were  printing  quarterly.  My  original  plan  was 
merely  to  cumulate  the  existing  indexes  which  would  have  been 
a  light  task;  but  as  soon  as  I  began  the  work,  I  found  my  plan 
would  not  do.  The  indexes  were  simple  and  crude,  they  had  only 
the  titles  of  papers,  and  I  wanted  a  topical  arrangement.  Then 
the  first  ten  volumes  had  no  indexes,  and  some  of  them  not  even 
a  table  of  contents.  So  I  set  to  work  to  make  my  cumulative 
index  an  original  production.  This  filled  the  leisure  hours  of 
nearly  two  years  and  I  burned  a  good  deal  of  midnight  oil  in  the 
process. 

In  my  library  I  had  a  volume  which  a  lady  book-agent  had 
cajoled  me  into  buying.  I  had  never  used  it,  but  it  now  gave 
me  an  idea  worth  its  cost.  It  was  called  “Guide  to  Readings  in  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica”  and  consisted  of  references  to  articles 
in  that  work,  which  taken  consecutively,  made  consistent  trea¬ 
tises  on  various  subjects.  This  suggested  a  “Guide  to  the  Study 
of  Charities  and  Correction”  by  means  of  the  Conference  Pro¬ 
ceedings;  which  I  thought  would  be  a  good  addition  to  the  index. 
I  divided  it  into  books  and  chapters.  Every  paper  which  had 
appeared  from  the  beginning  of  the  Conference,  was  briefly 
reviewed  under  appropriate  headings  and  some  thousands  of  ref¬ 
erences  to  the  discussions  were  included.  It  was  printed  partly 
in  10  pt.  and  partly  in  8  pt.  type.  The  reviews  in  10  pt.  were 
those  more  valuable  or  more  accessible  because  more  recent. 
Anyone  wanting  to  know  the  salient  facts  on  any  topic,  who 
would  read  in  the  proceedings  the  articles  reviewed  in  the  larger 
type,  would  get  a  good  working  knowledge  of  the  subject  so  far 
as  the  Conference  had  treated  it;  then  to  add  detail  and  fulness 
he  could  read  articles  reviewed  in  the  smaller  type.  The  reviews 
varied  from  three  lines  of  text  to  fourteen,  and  were  explicit 
enough  to  enable  a  student  to  judge  if  he  should  read  the  article. 


As  Secretary— Second  Series,  1905-1907  335 

The  Guide  was  later  than  the  Index  and  applied  to  thirty-four 
volumes. 

Five  years  later,  I  published  a  quinquennial  appendix  to  the 
Index,  bringing  it  down  to  the  year  1911.  When  I  resigned  from 
the  secretaryship,  I  offered  to  the  executive  committee,  as  a 
labor  of  love;  a  parting  gift  to  the  Conference;  to  make  in  my 
leisure  hours,  new  editions  of  the  guide  and  the  index  brought 
down  to  date,  provided  they  would  publish  the  two  works. 
Luckily,  for  me,  they  did  not  see  the  value  which  I  imagined 
there  would  be  in  the  publications,  and  possibly  they  were  right. 
Every  year  more  and  more  social  work  literature  was  issuing 
from  the  press,  and  the  value  of  the  proceedings  was  becoming 
comparatively  less. 

To  illustrate  the  difficulty  of  getting  people  to  appreciate  and 
even  know  of  the  good  things  you  do  for  them,  I  want  to  tell  of 
a  member  of  the  executive  committee,  who  was  one  of  the  best 
members  of  the  Conference,  coming  to  me  at  the  meeting  in 
Philadelphia,  a  few  months  after  the  index  had  been  circulated. 
He  was  preparing  a  memorial  address  on  a  deceased  member. 
He  asked  in  which  volume  of  proceedings  he  could  find  the  papers 
which  the  deceased  member  had  presented.  I  told  him  he  would 
find  them  all,  listed  under  the  man’s  name,  in  the  cumulative 
index.  He  had  never  heard  of  the  index,  and  denied  that  a  copy 
had  ever  reached  him,  although  he  admitted  he  had  received  the 
bulletin  regularly,  in  which  it  had  appeared. 

While  making  the  index  and  guide  was  a  big  job,  it  gave  me 
a  familiarity  with  the  proceedings  that  I  suppose  no  other  stu¬ 
dent  has  ever  had,  and  the  knowledge  I  gained  was  well  worth 
its  cost.  It  also  helped  me  in  my  work  as  secretary,  especially 
in  program  making  and  sometimes  in  my  duty  of  expounding  the 
unwritten  law. 

The  Conference  in  Philadelphia,  1906 

Some  of  the  leading  members  of  the  Conference  had  long 
desired  to  hold  a  meeting  in  the  Quaker  city.  But  the  state 
board  of  charities  of  Pennsylvania  had  taken  little  active  part 
with  us  after  the  earliest  years,  and  no  invitation  had  ever  been 
stressed.  Now  the  active  people  in  organized  charities  were 
leading  a  campaign  for  better  social  work,  and  at  Portland  a 


336 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


warm  invitation  was  extended  to  the  Conference  to  meet  in  Phila¬ 
delphia,  and  was  eagerly  accepted. 

In  preparation  for  the  Conference,  the  local  committee 
planned  a  “get-together  dinner’’  to  which  two  hundred  and  forty 
representative  citizens  were  invited.  This  was  the  first  time 
such  people  had  come  together  in  that  city,  to  consider  “the 
charities”.  They  had  often  met  to  honor  some  distinguished 
foreigner,  or  for  purposes  of  art  or  music;  and  they  met  inter¬ 
mittently  every  few  years  to  tinker  their  politics,  which  need 
frequent  re-arrangement ;  on  which  occasions,  they  usually 
achieve  some  spasmodic  reforms  which  barely  last  over  the  next 
election.  But  on  charitable  matters,  although  Philadelphians 
are  liberal,  often  lavish,  they  had  never  been  co-operative. 

The  executive  committee  met  in  Philadelphia  the  day  of  the 
dinner,  and  its  members  were  among  those  who  had  to  make 
speeches.  I  happened  to  hit  the  audience  with  a  story  of  a  cook 
in  my  employ  at  the  school  for  feeble-minded  who  was  much 
dissatisfied  because  I  would  not  permit  him  to  get  up  an  elabo¬ 
rate  seven-course  dinner  for  board  meeting  day.  He  told  me 
what  he  had  done  in  a  Philadelphia  institution  on  similar  occa- 
tions  and  said  “the  Philadelphians  is  the  eatinest  people  they 
is”.  I  did  not  realize,  till  after  the  laughter  and  applause  which 
followed,  that  Philadelphia  is  proud  of  being  “the  gastronomic 
center  of  the  Universe”. 

The  result  of  the  dinner  was  to  bring  the  value  and  impor¬ 
tance  of  the  Conference  home  to  the  social  workers  of  the  city 
and  still  more  to  the  benevolent  people  who  support  their  work.  It 
fairly  set  the  local  committee  going.  A  round  sum  was  sub¬ 
scribed  for  local  expenses.  The  largest  and  best  halls  were 
rented.  Free  excursions,  on  a  scale  previously  unheard  of,  were 
arranged  for  the  delegates.  The  committee  took  the  New  York 
Conference  of  1898,  for  its  pattern,  upon  which  to  improve.  They 
specialized  in  membership  as  had  never  been  done  before,  and 
ere  the  Conference  opened,  had  enrolled  many  hundreds  of  both 
sustaining  and  of  ordinary  members. 

At  the  date  for  the  Conference  approached,  we  were  con¬ 
fronted  by  a  very  difficult  and  delicate  situation.  The  president, 
Edward  T.  Devine,  was  in  San  Francisco  in  charge  of  the  enor¬ 
mous  relief  work  of  the  Red  Cross,  which  followed  the  earth- 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907  337 

quake  and  fire,  and  could  not  discharge  his  duty  in  the  chair. 
The  first  vice-president,  elected  at  Portland,  had  died,  the  second 
was  sick.  The  third  on  the  list  was  not  thought  to  have  quite 
the  qualifications  needed  for  this,  in  many  respects  the  most  • 
important  Conference  ever  held. 

The  situation  in  Philadelphia  was  a  somewhat  critical  one. 
The  idea  of  co-operation  of  charitable  interests  was  new  to  the 
city,  which,  although  it  was  of  all  American  cities,  the  most 
richly  provided  with  charitable  societies  and  institutions,  was 
sadly  behind  in  charity  organization.  The  earliest  of  the  socie¬ 
ties  for  organizing  charity  in  the  United  States  was  in  Phila¬ 
delphia,  but  it  was  constructed  on  a  faulty  plan ;  and  though  its 
principles  were  excellent  it  had  not  lived  up  to  them.  The  pres¬ 
ent  secretary  and  board  of  directors  were  putting  forth  the  most 
strenuous  effort  to  make  the  society  what  it  had  started  out  to 
be,  and  should  be;  and  were  succeeding.  It  was  with  the  hope 
of  helping  forward  the  re-constructive  reforms  at  which  they 
aimed;  that  they  had  invited  the  Conference  to  Philadelphia. 
They  were  ready  for  any  exertion  and  any  reasonable  amount  of 
expense  to  gain  their  object. 

When  the  Philadelphia  delegates  had  gone  before  the  nomi¬ 
nating  committee  at  Portland,  they  had  been  well  pleased  when 
Devine  was  named  for  president.  He  was  well  known  and  popu¬ 
lar  in  the  city,  having  been  at  one  time  a  professor  in  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Pennsylvania ;  they  knew  he  would  be  able  to  handle 
any  situation  that  might  arise.  Their  request  for  a  local  vice- 
president  had  been  refused  and  they  were  a  little  sore  in  conse¬ 
quence.  Now  a  contingency  had  arisen  such  as  they  wanted  to 
provide  against.  They  made  an  emphatic  protest  against  the 
third  vice-president  assuming  the  position  to  which  he  was 
entitled,  and  flatly  declared  that  they  would  not  stand  for  it. 

The  executive  committee  met  in  New  York,  and  had  a  long 
and  earnest  debate.  During  the  long  life  of  the  Conference,  no 
such  situation  had  been  known.  The  office  of  vice-president  had 
always  been  considered  merely  a  complimentary  one ;  at  any  rate 
his  duties  had  been  confined  to  an  occasional  occupation  of  the 
chair  to  relieve  the  president.  We  had  not  even  a  senate  for  him 
to  preside  over.  In  many  organizations,  being  elected  vice-presi¬ 
dent  is  a  usual  step  to  first  place ;  but  the  Conference  is  nothing, 


338 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


if  not  American,  and  no  American  ever  votes  for  a  vice-president 
with  expectation  of  his  being  president  later,  though  the 
instances  of  Tyler,  Fillmore,  Johnson,  Arthur  and  Roosevelt 
ought  to  have  taught  us  better. 

A  deputation  of  the  Philadelphia  people  waited  on  the  execu¬ 
tive  committee,  and  reiterated  their  demand  for  a  different  pre¬ 
siding  officer.  I  urged  the  committee  to  stand  by  the  regular 
order,  arguing  that  the  gentleman  whose  ability  was  in  question 
was  amenable  to  suggestion;  that  some  of  our  most  experienced 
members  knew  him  well  and  had  great  influence  with  him;  that 
he  would  feel  the  dignity  of  the  position  and  there  was  little 
danger  of  him  compromising  us.  But  after  long  and  anxious 
debate,  the  committee  determined  that  it  was  a  case  wherein  the 
individual  must  suffer  for  the  general  good.  They  elected  Mr. 
deForest,  who  had  been  president  in  1903,  president  pro-tem,  in 
Devine’s  absence. 

The  member  who  was  so  unfairly  treated  was  very  angry,  but 
he  attended  the  Conference  and  before  the  end  seemed  to  have 
forgotten  his  pique.  But  he  always  insisted  on  believing  that  I 
had  been  the  instigator  of  his  ill  treatment,  and  it  was  many 
years  before  he  forgave  me  for  an  offense  of  which  I  was  inno¬ 
cent. 

Of  course,  it  goes  without  saying  that  Mr.  deForest  made  an 
admirable  presiding  officer,  and  in  numbers,  influence  and  every 
other  way,  the  Conference  was  one  of  the  best  ever  held,  and  its 
influence  in  the  city  was  all  that  its  promoters  had  hoped  for. 
Many  new  departures  in  the  social  affairs  of  Philadelphia  date 
from  the  National  Conference  of  1906. 

Among  the  Philadelphia  delegates  was  a  lady  who  was  devoted 
to  equal  suffrage.  She  was  the  wife  of  the  chairman  of  the  local 
committee,  and  was  constant  in  attendance  and  in  friendly  social 
relations  with  the  lady  members.  She  came  to  me  to  know  how 
she  could  get  a  chance  to  talk  of  equal  suffrage  as  one  of  the  im¬ 
portant  social  reforms  which  would  lead  to  many  others.  I  told 
her  it  would  be  impossible  to  get  the  floor  for  a  speech  on  that 
topic,  but  if  she  was  shrewd  enough  to  take  advantage  of  some 
opening  in  one  of  the  discussions,  she  might  get  a  few  moments 
suffrage  talk  interjected  before  she  would  be  called  down  as  out 
of  order.  I  suggested  that  there  would  be  an  excellent  oppor- 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907  339 

tunity  for  this  when  Judge  Lindsey  made  his  talk  on  juvenile 
courts,  from  the  fact  that  the  women  voters  of  Denver  had  been 
for  him,  and  really  saved  him  to  his  work  when  the  machine  had 
attacked  him  fiercely. 

The  lady  was  equal  to  the  occasion,  and  when  Judge  Lindsey 
sat  down,  asked  him  how  much  woman  suffrage  had  contributed 
to  his  success,  and  whether  it  was  not  true  that  women  voters 
could  usually  be  counted  on  for  the  right  attitude  on  social  affairs 
in  politics.  Of  course,  Lindsey’s  answer  was  an  emphatic  yes, 
and  turned  the  trick.  HeT  question  and  his  answer  each  got  a 
round  of  applause. 

If  I  were  writing  a  history  of  the  Conference,  a  long  chapter 
would  be  devoted  to  the  meeting  in  Philadelphia,  which  was  one 
of  the  great  seven  days  of  social  work.  I  may  not  use  a  whole 
chapter  so,  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  reprinting  here  a  few  para¬ 
graphs  from  the  presidential  address.  Devine  was  in  San  Fran¬ 
cisco  up  to  his  ears  in  relief  work,  but  Mr.  deForest  read  his 
address  which  was  the  most  challenging  of  the  kind  in  Confer¬ 
ence  history : 

“If  I  have  rightly  conceived  the  dominant  idea  of  the  modern 
philanthropy,  it  is  embodied  in  a  determination  to  seek  out  and 
to  strike  effectively  at  those  organized  forces  of  evil,  at  those 
particular  causes  of  dependence  and  intolerable  living  conditions 
which  are  beyond  the  control  of  the  individuals  whom  they  injure 
and  whom  they  too  often  destroy. 

“No  doubt  there  are  individual  as  well  as  social  causes  of  de¬ 
pendence.  No  doubt  the  poor,  like  the  rich,  have  their  faults  and 
weaknesses,  the  consequences  of  which  recoil  upon  themselves. 
*  *  *  *  But  since  such  follies  and  sins  are  peculiar  to  no  one 
class,  may  we  not  profitably  turn  to  other  evils  from  which  the 
poor  suffer  greviously. 

“I  ask  your  attention  to  the  common  element  in  alcoholism  as 
encouraged  by  the  liquor  trust;  *  *  *  *  broken  health  and  ex¬ 
hausted  resources  directly  due  to  poisonous  and  fraudulent  pro¬ 
prietary  medicines;  other  injuries  for  which  manufacturers  and 
sellers  of  adulterated  foods  are  responsible;  the  manufacture  of 
sweated  goods,  with  a  sharing  of  the  profit  between  dealer  and 
consumer;  the  destruction  of  the  health  and  the  sacrifice  of  the 
lives  of  little  children  in  cotton  factories,  coal  mines,  glass  fac- 


340  Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 

tories ;  the  sending  of  messenger  boys  of  tender  years  to  brothels 
and  hotels,  to  their  grave  moral  injury ;  the  abduction  of  innocent 
country  girls  at  hotels  and  railway  stations  as  a  systematic  indus¬ 
try;  the  payment  of  less  than  a  living  wage  to  girls  in  stores 
and  factories,  with  sickening  indifference  to  the  methods  by  which 
the  remainder  is  secured ;  *  *  *  *  the  erection  and  management 
of  dwellings  which  are  unsanitary,  and  indecent,  because  they 
are  gilt-edge  investments.  *  *  *  * 

“Are  not  these,  and  other  forces  of  a  like  kind,  responsible  for 
the  accession  to  the  numbers  of  those  who  come  to  require  our 
help?  And  is  there  not  a  common  element  in  all  these*  *  *  * 
agencies  of  the  evil  one.  The  love  of  money  is  their  common  root. 
It  is  the  financial  interest  threatened  in  any  reform  which  makes 
reform  difficult  or  impossible.  *  *  *  * 

“I  am  constrained  to  charge  my  brethren  in  the  charity 
organization  movement  itself,  which  stands  pre-eminently  for 
analysis  of  causes ;  with  not  having  appreciated  the  importance 
of  the  environmental  causes  of  distress,  with  having  fixed  their 
attention  far  too  much  upon  personal  weaknesses  and  accidents, 
and  having  too  little  sought  for  the  evils  which  might  yield  to 
social  treatment.” 

Devine  challeneged  many  other  departments  of  social  work, 
as  he  had  his  own,  and  some  resentment  was  felt  by  some  of  those 
indicted.  But  on  the  whole,  it  was  a  wonderful  key-note  speech, 
and  its  high  level  of  interest,  thought  and  passion,  was  sustained 
throughout  most  of  the  proceedings. 

The  Conference  in  Minneapolis,  1907. 

There  were  many  notable  features  of  the  thirty-fourth  session 
of  the  conference,  perhaps  the  most  striking  being  the  degree  to 
which  consideration  of  the  less  immediate  causes  of  pauperism 
and  distress  occupied  the  attention  of  the  members. 

Questions  of  relief  were  hardly  mooted,  and  of  the  work  of 
the  Associated  Charities,  only  that  of  the  friendly  visitors  took 
up  much  time  and  space  in  the  papers  and  debates.  Equally 
noticeable  was  the  large  amount  of  time  devoted  to  the  welfare 
of  children.  On  the  official  program  three  general  and  five  spe¬ 
cial  sessions  were  alloted  to  them ;  but  an  eloquent  address  by  a 
United  States  Senator  at  the  opening  meeting  was  on  “Child 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907  341 

Labor  and  the  Constitution” ;  the  committee  on  defectives  and 
that  on  statistics  had  each  one  or  more  papers  devoted  to  chil¬ 
dren’s  affairs  ;  and  the  new  committee  on  “Promotion  of  Health 
in  Home,  School  and  Factory”  dealt  chiefly  with  the  second  sub¬ 
ject  in  its  title. 

The  series  of  papers  and  discussions  on  the  care  of  the  insane 
forms  an  admirable  summary  of  the  subject,  from  the  onset  of 
the  disease  to  the  after-care  of  the  recovered  patient.  The  com¬ 
mittee  on  defectives  gave  much  of  its  time  to  the  care  of  the  deaf 
and  the  blind;  topics  whoch  had  not  been  treated  for  some  years; 
the  industrial  aspect  of  work  for  the  blind  had  specially  com¬ 
plete  and  intelligent  presentation.  The  committee  on  statistics 
surprised  us  with  some  addresses  of  great  value.  No  paper  in 
recent  years  has  attracted  so  much  attention  as  one  on  vagrancy, 
presented  by  the  committee  on  state  supervision. 

The  attendance  was  good,  altho  the  number  present  from  the 
Northwestern  states,  after  very  thoro  advertising,  was  disap¬ 
pointing.  It  was  made  evident  that  the  serious  and  difficult  prob¬ 
lems  of  pauperism  and  crime  are  yet  hardly  felt  in  that  impor¬ 
tant  section  of  the  country. 

Butler  made  his  presidential  address  a  cogent  presentation 
of  what  he  claimed  to  be,  of  many  anti-social  forces,  the  one  de¬ 
manding  most  earnest  thought,  most  immediate  action.  He  gave 
the  facts  about  “Feeble-Mindedness  as  an  Inheritance”,  and  urged 
for  public  control  of  the  whole  class.  As  an  appendix  to  the 
address  he  offered  a  study  of  eight  hundred  and  three  families 
on  record  with  the  Board  of  State  Charities  of  which  he  was  sec¬ 
retary,  who  were  or  had  been  inmates  of  Indiana  poor  asylums. 
This  was  a  valuable  scientific  document  and  has  been  frequently 
used  by  students  and  others. 

As  was  to  be  expected  with  Butler  as  president  and  program- 
maker,  there  was  less  than  usual  of  speculative  theorizing  and 
more  than  usual  of  practical  application ;  but  Raymond  Robbins 
carried  us  all  with  him  in  an  address  on  fair  working  conditions 
for  labor  which  he  called  “The  One  Main  Thing.” 

An  interesting  event  was  the  rising  on  the  Conference  horizon 
of  a  bright  particular  star  (if  not  rather  a  comet)  from  the  baby 
State  of  Oklahoma.  Some  of  our  members  had  been  called  during 
the  past  two  years  to  the  new  state  to  help  guide  their  legisla- 


342  Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 

tion.  H.  H.  Hart  had  helped  them  write  their  children’s  law. 
Dr.  Barrows  had  told  them  of  the  weaknesses  and  other  defects 
of  the  criminal  codes  of  older  states.  I  had  drafted  a  bill  for  a 
school  for  feeble-minded,  and  had  spoken  for  it  successfully  before 
legislative  committees  and  at  a  joint  session  of  the  House  and 
Senate. 

The  state  had  chosen  to  have  an  elected  commissioner  of  char¬ 
ities  instead  of  a  state  board;  Kate  Barnard  had  won  the  elec¬ 
tion  and  her  popularity  and  eloquence  had  greatly  aided  the  suc¬ 
cess  of  her  party  at  the  polls. 

The  question  of  the  constitution  of  the  state  was  a  burning 
one.  The  draft  prepared  was  full  of  advanced  social  doctrine. 
Miss  Barnard  made  an  appeal  to  the  Conference  that  it  should, 
as  she  put  it,  help  them  to  win  a  constitution  whose  details  had 
followed  National  Conference  teachings.  Her  eloquence  and  per- 
sonality  made  a  great  impression,  especially  on  the  younger  men, 
who  all  fell  for  her.  But  of  course  the  Conference  could  not  de¬ 
part  from  its  time  honored  custom  so  far  as  to  endorse  a  state 
constitution. 

An  interesting  event  occurred  which  came  near  lending  a 
special  emphasis  to  the  distaste  of  the  Conference  for  election¬ 
eering.  The  nominating  committee  was  considering  a  man  for 
president,  and  the  leaders  were  for  him.  His  availability  was 
partly  personal  but  chiefly  because  he  represented  a  large  and 
influential  body  of  people  who  had  so  far  been  luke-warm  and 
whom  it  was  highly  desirable  to  attach  more  firmly  to  the  body. 
An  injudicious  would-be  supporter  of  the  gentleman  under  con¬ 
sideration,  tried  to  make  a  political  deal  in  his  behalf,  and  did 
it  so  clumsily  that  it  became  public  before  it  was  pulled  off. 
Political  deals  are  intrinsically  bad;  but  when  they  are  handled 
clumsily  they  become  positively  wicked.  This  excited  so  much 
feeling  that  only  by  very  judicious  management  on  the  part  of 
some  wise  and  prudent  members  was  it  possible  to  avert  what 
would  have  been  a  disaster.  To  have  let  it  be  known  that  the 
gentleman’s  name  had  been  considered  and  then  turned  down, 
would  have  alienated  those  we  wished  to  attract. 

Only  thrice  during  my  nine  years  of  office  did  f  say  one  word 
which  could  influence  the  nominating  committee  as  to  a  presi¬ 
dent.  The  first  time  it  was  when  I  was  called  on  to  testify  to 


As  Secretary — Second  Series,  1905-1907  343 

the  character  and  ability  of  a  gentleman  upon  whom  a  majority 
of  the  committee  had  decided,  but  whose  election  was  in  danger 
from  a  minority  report,  threatened  by  a  vicious  and  treacherous 
opponent.  Once  it  failed  when  I  suggested  that  choosing  an 
institution  man  might  help  keep  his  fellows  in  line;  another 
time,  I  did  say,  when  by  the  merest  accident  I  heard  that  a  cer¬ 
tain  man  was  being  considered,  the  one  word  “impossible”.  This 
time  the  candidate  was  defeated,  partly  because  I  said  the  word 
and  partly  because  of  his  friends’  electioneering,  but  chiefly 
because  of  his  personal  character. 

In  this  case  the  defeated  man  became  my  bitter  enemy  and 
made  a  fierce  attack  on  me  with  the  executive  committee,  which 
though  unpleasant  did  no  harm  and  even  a  little  good,  since  he 
combined  with  the  personal  attack  an  indictment  of  the  policy 
into  which  I  was  leading  the  Conference.  The  result  was  that 
some  of  my  plans,  which  so  far  had  simply  been  permitted,  were 
voted  on  and  positively  approved  by  the  executive  committee  and 
so  more  easily  carried  out. 

The  man  in  question  was  one  of  the  three  or  four  personal 
enemies  I  have  ever  had  so  far  as  I  know;  although  there  may 
have  been  others  whom  I  did  not  understand  as  such.  I  think  I 
cannot  be  insulted  nor  slighted  by  accident ;  anyone  who  chooses 
to  insult  me  must  make  it  very  plain;  not  because  I  am  thick- 
skinned  but  because  I  don’t  look  for  slights  nor  insults  and  take 
every  one’s  good  will  for  granted  unless  they  positively  prove 
the  contrary.  Most  slights  and  insults  are  accidental — were  not 
intended  as  such  by  their  imagined  perpetrators.  Then  again, 
most  serious  enmities  arise  out  of  greed,  and  I  have  rarely  pos¬ 
sessed  anything  which  another  wished  to  take  away  from  me. 


Chapter  Six 


ADVENTURES  AS  SECRETARY 
Third  Series,  1908-1913 

With  the  growth  of  the  Conference  and  the  coming  of  the 
various  social  organizations  now  meeting  in  connection  with  it, 
the  duties  of  the  secretary  became  more  and  more  merely  those 
of  administrative  detail.  My  appearance  on  the  platform  was 
chiefly  to  make  announcements  and  give  explanations.  The 
business  engrossed  me  so  entirely  that  I  had  little  time  or  energy 
for  the  work,  and  I  like  the  work  much  better  than  the  business. 
I  could  no  longer  act  as  chairman  of  a  committee;  and  only 
twice  since  the  Conference  of  1908,  have  I  been  asked  to  read  a 
paper.  I  had,  however,  the  pleasant  duty  of  preparing  the  way 
each  year  with  the  local  committee;  helping  them  to  interest 
the  people  of  the  city  in  which  we  were  to  meet;  and  on  Confer¬ 
ence  Sunday  there  was  usually  a  pulpit  or  two  for  me  to  fill. 
Yet  still  I  felt  I  had  become  a  deacon  instead  of  an  apostle;  I 
had  left  the  ministry  of  the  word  to  serve  tables. 

The  Conference  at  Richmond 

\ 

The  fact  that  our  president  at  Richmond  was  leader  in  the 
Catholic  Charities  of  New  York  helped  to  bring  the  St.  Vincent 
de  Paul  Society  in  closer  union  than  it  had  been  before.  Its  con¬ 
ference  was  held  in  Richmond  immediately  before  the  national 
one,  with  mutual  benefit.  I  was  called  on  to  speak  to  the  Vin¬ 
centians,  and  at  the  close  of  my  remarks  Monsignor  McMahon  of 
New  York  said  I  understood  their  society  as  well  as  possible  for 
a  non-Catholic. 

When  it  came  to  choosing  the  preacher  of  the  Conference 
sermon  Mr.  Mulry  delegated  that  duty  to  me.  He  said  he  did 
not  wish  to  obtrude  his  religious  faith  by  inviting  a  Catholic 
priest  to  preach.  I  asked  the  secretary  of  the  local  committee 
to  suggest  the  name  of  a  minister,  not  of  Richmond,  but  one  who 


0 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913 


345 


was  known  there,  and  who  would  be  acceptable  to  the  Southern 
people.  He  named  Rev.  M.  Ashby  Jones,  then  of  Columbus,  Ga., 
now  of  Atlanta.  The  sermon  was  of  a  high  order.  Mr.  George 
Foster  Peabody  who  heard  it  asked  me  to  get  the  manuscript  and 
print  20,000  copies  and  distribute  them,  sending  him  the  bill.  I 
made  the  friendship  of  Mr.  Jones  on  that  occasion  and  have  kept 
it  since. 

The  sessions  were  held  in  the  old  Episcopal  church  where  we 
were  shown  the  pews  of  such  leaders  of  the  Confederacy  as 
Robert  E.  Lee,  and  Jefferson  Davis.  Some  beautiful  stained 
glass  windows,  among  them  memorials  placed  there  by  Mrs. 
John  M.  Glenn’s  grandfather,  made  the  interior  glorious.  The 
rector  of  the  church,  Rev.  Robert  S.  Forsythe,  was  constant  in 
his  hospitality  and  interest;  attending  every  session  and  often 
opening  the  meeting  with  prayer.  When  it  came  to  the  Sunday 
night  meeting,  we  had  arranged  to  use  one  of  the  theatres,  think¬ 
ing  it  an  intrusion  to  hold  a  session  in  the  church  on  Sunday, 
but  the  rector  was  quite  disturbed;  he  begged  us  not  to  desert 
him ;  promised  to  fill  the  chancel  and  every  available  place  with 
chairs,  to  accommodate  the  large  meeting  we  expected;  and  was 
so  evidently  sincere  that  he  had  his  way. 

The  conference  being  in  the  South,  the  committee  on  public 
health  paid  special  attention  to  problems  of  health  among  the 
negroes;  and  the  committee  on  children  to  those  of  child-labor, 
especially  in  cotton  mills.  The  committee  on  family  welfare  had 
some  good  papers  and  discussions  on  work  among  the  mountain 
whites.  1  1 

Among  the  papers  presented  by  the  committee  on  children 
was  one  by  Dr.  McKelway,  the  assistant  secretary  of  the 
National  Child  Labor  Committee,  on  the  topic  of  “Child  Labor 
and  Citizenship”.  He  ended  his  paper  by  a  declaration  of 
dependence”  which  he  made  in  the  name  of  the  children  of 
America.  It  is  so  interesting  that  I  quote  it  in  full. 

"In  the  name  of  the  toiling  children  of  America,  the  neglected 
children,  the  children  sacrificed  to  greed,  I  presume  to  suggest  a 
paper  which  I  shall  read  in  their  behalf : 

Declaration  of  dependence  by  the  children  of  America  in 
mines  and  factories  and  work  shops  assembled. 


346  Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 

Whereas  we,  children  of  America,  are  declared  to  have  been 
horn  free  and  equal,  and 

Whereas  we  are  yet  in  bondage  in  this  land  of  the  free;  are 
forced  to  toil  the  long  day  or  night,  with  no  control  over  the  con¬ 
ditions  of  labor  as  to  health  or  safety  or  hours  or  wages,  and 
with  no  right  to  the  rewards  of  our  service,  therefore  be  it 

Resolved  I,  That  childhood  is  endowed  with  certain  inherent 
and  inalienable  rights,  among  which  are  the  right  to  be  children 
and  not  bread-winners ;  the  right  to  play  and  to  dream ;  the  right 
to  the  sleep  of  childhood  during  the  night  season;  the  right  to 
an  education;  that  we  may  have  equality  of  opportunity  for 
developing  all  that  there  is  in  us  of  mind  and  heart. 

Resolved  II,  That  we  declare  ourselves  to  be  helpless  and 
dependent;  that  we  are  and  of  right  ought  to  be  dependent  and 
that  we  hereby  present  the  appeal  of  our  helplessness  that  we 
may  be  protected  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  rights  of ‘childhood. 

Resolved  III,  That  we  demand  the  restoration  of  our  rights 
by  the  abolition  of  child  labor  in  America.” 

In  a  paper  on  compulsory  education,  Prof.  Hand  of  the  Uni¬ 
versity  of  South  Carolina,  had  given  some  statistics  on  illiteracy ; 
among  them  that  North  Carolina  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  list, 
with  the  largest  percentage  of  illiterates  in  the  United  States. 
His  figures  were  eight  years  old  and  in  the  interval  North  Caro¬ 
lina  had  made  strenuous  efforts  at  education ;  the  value  of  school 
property  had  been  quadrupled  and,  during  five  years  past,  new 
schoolhouses  had  been  built  at  the  rate  of  one  a  day.  A  delegate 
from  North  Carolina,  the  secretary  of  the  state  board,  was  heart¬ 
broken  to  have  her  state  so  maligned  and  came  to  me  in  tears. 
She  was  a  modest,  timid  woman,  and  did  not  know  how  to  get 
before  the  Conference,  to  refute  what  she  felt  was  a  slander  on 
her  state.  I  undertook  to  do  it  for  her,  and  getting  the  floor  at 
the  next  session  I  told  the  audience  of  the  facts  and  won  the 
lasting  gratitude  of  the  lady. 

A  committee  on  “Press  and  Publicity”  made  its  first  report. 
This  was  quite  new  and  of  a  different  order  from  the  usual 
Conference  work.  It  was  a  sign  of  the  way  the  Conference  was 
becoming  useful  to  its  members,  not  only  teaching  them  what  to 
do,  but  also  how  to  get  the  means  of  doing  it.  This  committee 
produced  a  set  of  papers  of  great  value  to  the  executive  officers 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913 


347 


of  charitable  agencies.  The  chairman  was  H.  Wirt  Steele,  who 
for  several  years  had  been  employed  by  the  Conference  as  pub¬ 
licity  agent;  and  who  had  been  very  useful  in  the  position;  he 
reported  regularly  for  three  years  during  which  time  the  papers 
covered  the  subject  so  well  that  it  was  dropped  and  has  not  been 
necessary  again. 

At  its  session  shortly  before  the  Conference  met,  the  legisla¬ 
ture  of  Virginia  had  enacted  a  law  for  a  Board  of  State  Chari¬ 
ties,  copying  the  Indiana  law  almost  verbatim.  The  Board,  just 
appointed  by  the  Governor,  was  about  to  select  for  secretary  a 
well  known  politician  who  had  no  knowledge  of  social  work  and 
little  capacity  for  learning  it.  I  met  Gov.  Swanson  at  a  recep¬ 
tion  given  the  Conference  at  the  executive  mansion  and  when  he 
heard  that  I  had  been  the  first  secretary  of  the  Indiana  Board, 
he  wanted  to  know  all  I  could  tell  him. 

He  was  soon  convinced  that  the  man  they  had  chosen  would 
not  do  and  while  the  Conference  was  in  session  a  suitable  secre¬ 
tary  was  chosen,  Rev.  J.  T.  Mastin.  He  came  at  once  to  see  me, 
and  I  introduced  him  to  Amos  Butler.  Between  us  we  got  him 
started  right  and  his  administration  has  been  conspicuously 
successful.  Social  work  in  Virginia,  both  public  and  private, 
has  advanced  greatly  and  is  still  advancing  under  his  influence. 

One  of  the  pleasant  incidents  to  me  personally  in  being  among 
the  Richmond  people  was  that  they  liked  me  all  the  better 
because  I  used  to  be  an  Englishman.  I  have  often  been  among 
groups  with  whom  my  nativity  was  a  liability;  I  was  a  good 
fellow  in  spite  of  it;  at  Richmond  the  liability  turned  into  an 
asset. 

Conference  Finances 
The  Local  Contribution 

During  the  years  that  the  Conference  had  no  membership 
fee,  the  question  of  finance  was  a  troublesome  one.  As  I  showed 
in  a  previous  chapter,  the  only  support  the  Conference  had  at 
first  was  by  selling  its  proceedings  and  the  treasurer  was  always 
more  or  less  worried.  When  a  membership  fee  was  established 
it  was  quite  small  and  not  nearly  enough  to  defray  our  expenses. 
At  each  meeting  we  usually  had  invitations  for  the  next  one  from 
several  cities.  One  of  the  early  conditions  of  acceptance  was 


348 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


that  the  local  committee  should  defray  local  expenses,  such  as 
publicity  and  rental  of  halls  and  the  salary  of  the  official  reporter. 
To  these,  at  their  choice,  they  added  expenses  of  receptions  and 
sometimes  excursions.  When  we  met  at  Omaha  in  1887,  the  local 
fund  was  more  than  they  were  able  to  spend  and  when  the 
accounts  were  adjusted  a  balance  of  $700.00  remained;  this  was 
turned  over  to  the  Conference  and  thankfully  accepted.  This 
gave  the  idea  of  requiring  a  certain  subscription  from  each  local 
committee  towards  the  publication  of  the  proceedings  which  was 
always  paid;  usually  very  cheerfully.  The  sum  first  arrived  at 
as  proper  was  $500.00  and  it  remained  at  that  figure  for  a  good 
many  years.  The  local  committees  did  not  officially  tell  the 
executive  committee  how  much  the  Conference  cost  them;  but 
for  some  years  it  was  supposed  to  be  about  $3000.00  in  each  city. 
This  was  the  amount  collected  in  Indianapolis  in  1891,  and  when 
the  committee  there  met  to  close  its  accounts,  the  first  check 
made  was  one  for  $500.00  to  the  treasurer  of  the  Conference.  It 
was  characteristic  of  the  chairman  of  that  committee,  of  which 
I  was  a  member,  that  when  we  found  we  had  incurred  liabilities 
of  $270.00  over  the  subscribed  sum  and  one  of  us  suggested  ask¬ 
ing  for  subscriptions  from  some  people  who  could  well  afford  to 
give  them,  Mr.  Hanna  said  “no,  we  will  not  ask  anyone  to  pay 
for  a  dead  horse’7  and  promptly  wrote  his  own  check  for  the 
deficit. 

In  the  course  of  four  or  five  years  after  I  became  secretary 
in  1904,  I  was  able  to  work  up  the  local  contribution  towards 
publication  to  $1500.00,  and  afterwards  to  $2000.00.  I  justified 
the  request  for  this  mpney  from  the  city  to  my  own  conscience 
(unless  I  had  done  so  I  could  not  have  asked  for  it)  not  only 
because  of  the  great  social  benefit  which  the  Conference  carried 
with  it,  but  also  as  an  actual  good  investment  of  the  business 
people. 

When  the  Conference  brings  two  thousand  people  to  a  city 
for  a  week  their  actual  hotel  bills  are  on  the  average  at  least 
$5.00  per  day,  or  a  total  of  $70,000.00.  Their  other  necessary 
expenses  are  certainly  $1.00  per  day  or  $14,000.00  more.  Then 
many  take  advantage  of  the  big  city  stores,  possibly  spending 
$20,000.00  or  $30,000.00  in  them;  and  often  a  physician  or  a 
dentist  would  be  called  on.  To  bring  $100,000.00  in  actual  addi- 


349 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913 

* 

tional  cash  receipts  to  the  business  and  professional  people  of 
the  city  is  surely  worth  the  expenditure  of  ten  per  cent  of  the 
amount  to  secure  it.  But  to  the  business  men,  the  advertising 
which  the  city  gets  is  of  more  value  than  the  additional  bank 
clearings.  Of  course  this  does  not  apply  to  New  York,  or  Phila¬ 
delphia,  or  Chicago.  But  in  every  city  of  third  or  fourth  rank, 
there  is  a  board  of  trade,  or  business  men’s  club,  one  of  whose 
purposes  is  to  advertise  the  city.  The  Conference  mails  many 
thousand  circulars  and  letters  each  of  which  carries  the  name 
of  the  city  in  which  the  meeting  is  to  be  held. 

When  we  went  to  Minneapolis,  the  business  men’s  club  agreed 
to  finance  the  local  committee  out  of  a  fund  it  had  for  such  pur¬ 
poses  on  condition  that  no  other  collection  should  be  made.  The 
day  before  we  adjourned  I  called  on  the  secretary  to  collect  the 
contribution  of  $1500.00;  which  was  paid  so  cheerfully  that  I 
asked  Mr.  Guy  if  the  club  was  satisfied  with  the  expenditure. 
He  declared  that  they  felt  fully  repaid  by  what  the  Conference 
had  done  and  the  number  of  people  it  had  brought  to  the  city. 
These  thoughts  and  facts  made  me  feel  that  we  were  not  beggars 
when  we  asked  for  the  contribution,  but  that  we  gave  the  people 
full  value  for  their  money. 

I  suppose  it  would  have  been  feasible,  at  any  period  subse¬ 
quent  to  1884,  to  secure  contributions  from  benevolent,  wealthy 
people  which  would  have  put  the  executive  committee  on  Easy 
Street.  But  this  would  have  been  very  repugnant  to  me  and  to 
many  of  our  best  members.  I  and  they  wanted  to  feel  free  of  any 
obligation  which  might  involve  fear  of  the  consequences  of  plain 
speaking.  In  inviting  people  to  address  us  we  could  always  say 
“speak  what  you  believe,  we  have  no  limits  except  those  of 
courtesy  and  fair  parliamentary  practice”.  So  far  as  I  know, 
there  was  never  any  feeling  that  we  could  not  tell  the  truth  as 
we  saw  it  lest  we  might  offend  some  interest  or  some  one  who 
was  profiting  by  error. 

We  supported  our  work  by  a  small  membership  fee  which 
any  social  worker  could  pay  without  hurting  himself  and  by  a 
contribution  from  the  people  among  whom  we  met,  for  which  we 
gave  full  value.  This  seemed  a  strong,  sane,  democratic  finan¬ 
cial  basis,  and  the  fact  that  we  never  had  quite  enough  money  to 
do  all  we  would  like  to  do,  was  wholesome  for  us,  it  kept  us  from 
extravagance. 


350 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


The  Second  Conference  at  Buffalo 

The  thirty-sixth  Conference,  that  of  1909,  with  Ernest  Bick- 
nell  as  president,  met  in  Buffalo,  in  the  same  month  of  the  year 
that  had  seen  the  gathering  of  the  fifteenth,  in  1888.  The  con¬ 
trast  between  the  two  Conferences  in  membership,  in  interest, 
and  in  program,  was  an  admirable  expression  of  the  evolution 
of  charity  and  correction  which  had  taken  place  in  the  twenty- 
one  years  between  the  two  meetings. 

In  1888,  preventive  philanthropy  was  just  gaining  recogni¬ 
tion,  but  the  problems  of  ameliorative  relief  were  the  urgent 
ones.  In  1909,  constructive  effort  in  benevolence  occupied  the 
place  which  preventive  work  had  barely  attained  at  the  former 
period;  while  the  theory  of  prevention  had  grown  in  acceptance 
until  it  was  a  truism  to  say  that  poverty  is  a  temporary  condi¬ 
tion,  that  it  is  mainly  due  to  preventible  causes,  that  science  has 
shown  us  how  it  miay  be  averted  and  that  human  benevolence 
has  seized  on  the  method  and  purposes  to  put  it  in  practice. 

In  twenty-one  years,  the  problem  of  the  poor  had  passed  over 
from  an  affair  of  the  individual  to  one  of  the  neighborhood. 
Questions  like  those  of  labor  and  its  reward,  city  congestion, 
etc. ;  which  once  seemed  proper  only  to  the  domain  of  Economics 
were  now  considered  from  the  philanthropic  side,  if  not  exclu¬ 
sively,  yet  so  largely  that  they  belong  there  in  the  estimation 
of  social  workers.  Questions  of  public  health  were  recognized 
as  belonging  in  the  highest  sense  to  preventive  philanthropy. 
Educational  reform  which  shall  lead  to  industrial  efficiency  was 
claimed  as  a  concern  of  constructive  beneficence. 

State  supervision  and  administration  still  occupied  the  center 
of  the  stage,  but  the  objects  of  supervision  were  multiplied  in 
number  and  wonderfully  varied  in  kind.  Several  wholly  new 
methods  of  care  for  defectives  and  dependents  had  come  into 
existence  since  1888 ;  while  in  the  methods  of  dealing  with  delin¬ 
quents,  the  changes  amounted  to  a  revolution. 

Above  all,  it  was  being  more  and  more  recognized  that  secur¬ 
ing  justice  rather  than  giving  relief  is  the  supreme  task  of  philan¬ 
thropy,  that  justice  is  the  highest  charity  and  that  justice  means 
the  equalizing  of  opportunity  in  the  spirit  of  human  brother¬ 
hood.  This  last  sentiment  was  emphasized  strikingly  in  the  Con- 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908*1913  351 

ference  sermon,  which  was  preached  by  an  eloquent  and  enlight¬ 
ened  Jewish  Rabbi,  on  the  topic  of  “Charity  versus  Justice”. 
As  the  president  was  in  Italy  during  the  Spring  with  the  Red 
Cross  relief  work  after  the  Messina  earthquake,  he  had  assigned 
to  me  the  duty  of  choosing  the  Conference  preacher;  and  it  was 
a  sincere  pleasure  to  be  able  to  invite  Rabbi  Stephen  S.  Wise 
to  preach  to  11s ;  all  the  more  because  I  remembered  how  he  had 
invited  me  to  occupy  his  pulpit  in  Portland,  Oregon,  when  I  was 
preparing  for  the  Conference  in  that  city  a  few  years  earlier. 

There  was  no  new  committee  reporting  for  the  first  time  at 
Buffalo,  yet  there  were  several  striking  new  departures  within 
old  committee  lines.  On  “Health  and  Sanitation”  the  inter¬ 
relations  of  public  and  private  efforts  were  treated  in  a  more 
practical  way  than  ever  before;  several  public  officials  partici¬ 
pating.  The  topic  of  health  which  other  than  as  concerned  with 
hospitals,  had  been  a  new  one  to  the  Conference  in  1905,  had 
become,  in  four  years,  one  of  the  leading  ones. 

Several  forcible  instances  of  the  inter-relation  between  com¬ 
mittees  were  shown.  Noteworthy  examples  were  given  under 
“Immigration”  as  relating  to  public  health,  child  care,  delin¬ 
quency,  and  prostitution.  The  connection  between  immigration 
and  the  spread  of  typhoid  fever;  the  remarkable  and  surprising 
fact  that  the  disease  increases  and  decreases,  with  the  prosperity 
of  industry,  instead  of  in  the  reverse  degree  as  might  be 
expected;  was  made  clear  in  a  paper  coming  from  the  Typhoid 
Fever  Commission  of  Pittsburgh ;  and  other  papers  showing 
other  unexpected  side  results  were  all  intensely  interesting. 

When  the  committee  on  nomination  was  busy  the  fact  leaked 
out  that  they  were  contemplating  the  choice  of  Jane  Addams  for 
president.  Much  as  I  would  have  liked  to  have  a  share  in  giving 
her  the  honor,  I  had  strictly  conformed  to  a  rule  I  had  laid 
down  for  myself  when  I  was  made  the  paid  officer  of  the  Confer¬ 
ence — that  I  would  keep  absolutely  aloof  from  influencing  elec¬ 
tions.  A  prominent  member  begged  me  to  break  my  rule  on  this 
one  occasion.  Although  I  had  never  announced  my  policy,  he 
told  me  that  he  knew  and  approved  it  highly;  but  that  this  time 
something  had  to  be  done;  that  the  choice  of  a  woman  for  presi¬ 
dent  would  alienate  two  strong  groups  of  people  whom  we  had 
recently  secured  and  who  were  valuable  additions  to  the  mem- 


352 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


bership;  that  the  nominating  committee  would  listen  to  me  as  to 
no  one  else;  that  I  must  sacrifice  my  own  preferences  for  the 
good  of  the  Conference.  He  urged  me  to  tell  the  chairman  of 
the  committee  of  the  evils  that  would  follow;  of  the  danger, 
almost  the  certainty,  that  the  choice  of  a  woman  president  would 
wreck  the  Conference. 

I  did  not  tell  the  gentleman  that  I  should  be  delighted  to  see 
a  woman  chosen ;  that  without  parading  the  fact,  I  had  for  years 
been  steadily  working  for  real  democracy,  for  actual  equality  of 
sects  and  sexes;  that  I  had  gained  one  great  step  this  year  in  the 
choice  of  a  J ewish  Rabbi  for  a  Conference  preacher ;  that  we  had 
had  a  Catholic  president  and  I  hoped  to  see  not  only  a  woman 
president  but  also  a  Jewish  one  before  many  years  were  over. 

But  I  did  tell  him  that  I  had  seen  the  Conference  wrecked 
many  times,  and  each  time  it  had  come  up  smiling,  more  strong 
than  ever;  that  I  had  seldom  meddled  and  never  would  again 
with  the  work  of  the  nominating  committee;  any  more  than  I 
always  had  done  by  preparing  for  them  a  list  of  committees  and 
officers  for  several  years  back,  indicating  the  states  from  which 
each  had  come.  The  committee  acted  as  my  friend  feared,  but 
Miss  Addams  made  an  admirable  president;  nobody  was  alien¬ 
ated  nobody  even  expressed  displeasure.  The  Conference  grew  in 
membership  and  influence  and  the  sessions  over  which  the  woman 
presided  were  some  of  the  best  ever  held  anywhere. 

Meeting  my  fearful  friend  in  New  York  a  few  weeks  after  the 
St.  Louis  Conference,  I  mentioned  what  a  good  one  it  had  been 
and  especially  how  nobody  stayed  away  because  of  the  woman 
president  and  he  replied  “I  tell  you,  Johnson,  they  can’t  stay 
away,  it’s  too  interesting”.  Once  more  I  refrained  from  saying, 
“I  told  you  so,”  though  I  surely  thought  it. 

The  Second  Conference  in  St.  Louis,  1910 

As  was  the  case  in  Buffalo,  Detroit,  Washington  and  New 
York,  the  Conference  played  a  return  engagement  in  St.  Louis; 
so  reminiscences  were  in  order.  I  had  begun  my  Conference 
experiences  in  that  city  twenty-six  years  before  and  first  began 
to  feel  myself  a  social  worker  there;  St.  Louis  was  redolent  of 
memories  for  me.  Of  those  present  in  1884,  only  a  handful  came 
in  1910 ;  and  of  our  hosts  but  one  or  two  greeted  us  again.  Most 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913  353 

of  the  old  timers  were  dead  and  of  those  living  few  remained  in 
social  work. 

The  city  had  changed  greatly.  From  being  rather  backward 
in  social  affairs,  it  was  now  well  to  the  front  in  such  things  as 
juvenile  courts,  public  baths,  playgrounds,  and  some  other  of 
the  newer  developments.  The  old  Provident  Association,  which 
in  1884  was  a  type  of  the  decadent  relief  society,  altho  it  kept 
its  old  name  had  been  made  over  on  modern  principles  of  organi¬ 
zation  and  practice.  It  was  particularly  pleasant  to  find  a  star 
graduate  of  my  first  class  in  the  school  of  philanthropy,  that  of 
1905;  the  first  and  best  tho  the  smallest;  acting  as  city  commis¬ 
sioner  of  parks,  playgrounds,  and  public  baths. 

The  advance  publicity  had  been  very  poorly  done  by  the  local 
committee;  we  had  Wirt  Steele  as  publicity  agent  and  when  he 
and  I  got  to  work  among  the  reporters  we  found  the  reason. 
The  man  who  had  undertaken  publicity  for  the  local  people  was 
very  unpopular  with  the  newsmen.  They  called  him  a  high  brow. 
They  took  heartily  to  Steele  and  myself;  we  were  democratic 
enough  in  our  habits  for  anybody;  and  we  did  get  pretty  good 
notices  after  the  meetings  began ;  although  the  Conference  suf¬ 
fered  from  the  previous  neglect. 

A  notable  new  committee  to  report  at  St.  Louis  was  that  on 
Occupational  Standards.  This  marked  a  new  alignment  of  social 
forces.  Its  purpose  was  to  disclose  the  degree  to  which  industrial 
conditions  complicate  the  problems  of  distress  and  delinquency; 
to  show  that  much  both  of  poverty  and  crime,  is  really  a  by¬ 
product  of  industry ;  to  arrange  and  co-ordinate  the  “mute  human 
testimony  which  whether  it  comes  to  us  in  the  form  of  premature 
Widowhood,  or  broken  health,  or  inefficiency,  or  juvenile  crinte; 
whether  we  find  it  in  a  painter’s  poisoned  blood,  or  a  telephone 
girl’s  frazzled  nerve  cells,  in  the  empty  sleeve  of  a  brakeman,  or 
in  the  under-fed  child  of  an  under-paid  man,  has  the  stamp  of 
the  workshop  about  it”. 

The  report  made  by  Paul  IT.  Kellogg  as  chairman,  was  the  first 
of  a  series  of  three ;  the  second,  with  a  change  of  the  committee’s 
name  to  Standards  of  Living  and  Labor,  with  Florence  Kelley 
as  chairman,  was  made  the  next  year  at  Boston.  The  third  under 
the  same  name,  by  Owen  Lovejoy  at  Cleveland,  closed  the  series 
and  presented  a  platform  of  standards  on  such  subjects  as  a 


I 


354  Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 

living  wage,  safety  and  health,  reasonable  hours  of  labor,  home 
life  possibilities,  child  labor  and  other  things. 

The  Conference  could  not  be  asked  to  adopt  the  inclusive  and 
radical  platform.  It  does  not  adopt  platforms.  But  a  special 
meeting  at  Cleveland,  held  on  the  side  lines,  adopted  a  series  of 
resolutions  of  a  noteworthy  character.  The  three  reports  of  1910, 
1911  and  1912  emphasized,  as  no  others  had  done,  the  change  of 
front  which  the  Conference  forces  had  effected  during  the  fruit¬ 
ful  years  that  were  passing.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  old  guard 
were  bewildered  by  such  new  strategy  and  vainly  attempted  to 
bring  the  hosts  back  to  the  ground  they  seemed  to  be  abandoning. 

One  special  feature  of  this  Conference  was  a  very  large 
exhibit  in  the  basement  of  the  Odeon,  the  great  hall  in  which 
most  of  the  meetings  were  held.  This  was  the  most  elaborate 
thing  of  the  kind  we  had  ever  had  and  I  think  has  not  been 
equalled  since. 

At  St.  Louis,  the  executive  committee  insisted  on  raising  my 
salary  from  $2500.00  to  $3000.00,  although  I  warned  them  that 
I  had  sometimes  had  difficulty  in  paying  it  at  the  lower  figure. 
A  year  later,  on  my  request,  the  salary  was  reduced  to  its  former 
amount.  This  action  was  quite  forcibly  opposed  by  several  of 
the  committee  and  was  only  adopted  on  my  urgency.  It  was  at 
a  time  when  the  financial  stringency  from  which  the  Conference 
was  never  wholly  free  was  a  little  worse  than  usual,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  Cleveland  local  committee  had  fallen  down  on  its 
pledged  support.  I  felt  that  the  Conference  was  altogether  too 
good  a  thing  to  be  embarrassed  by  having  to  pay  high  salaries; 
that  had  I  been  financially  able  to  do  so,  I  would  gladly  have 
given  my  services  free  but  as  I  could  not  do  that  I  was  wishful 
to  take  no  more  than  a  reasonable  living  from  it;  and  being  a 
man  of  simple  tastes  and  frugal  habits,  $2500.00  was  a  sufficient 
salary  for  me. 

I  believed  then  and  do  still  that  the  other  satisfactions  which 
come  to  the  faithful  social  worker  are  great  enough  to  justify 
a  man  working  at  even  some  pecuniary  sacrifice  if  necessary.  T 
acted  according  to  my  convictions  although  it  was  hard  to  make 
the  executive  committee  see  my  point  and  I  had  to  submit  to 
being  considered  a  crank,  (which  alas!  was,  and  is,  only  too 
true.) 


355 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  19081913 

Internationalism  and  the  Conference 

For  many  years  we  had  welcomed  to  the  Conference  many 
delegates  from  Canada  and  a  few  from  Mexico,  and  in  1897  we 
had  held  the  Conference  in  the  chief  city  of  our  Northern  neigh¬ 
bors.  These  facts  suggested  the  idea  of  making  the  Conference 
in  name  as  in  fact  international  instead  of  national.  A  commit¬ 
tee  to  consider  this  was  appointed  at  the  meeting  in  Buffalo,  but 
the  consensus  of  opinion  was  that  we  might  as  well  leave  well 
enough  alone. 

However,  when  the  International  Congress  of  Public  Relief 
and  Private  Philanthropy,  which  held  its  sessions  once  every 
five  years  in  Europe;  was  called  to  assemble  in  Copenhagen  in 
September  1910,  and  we  were  invited  to  send  delegates,  our 
executive  committee  felt  the  invitation  should  be  accepted.  I 
was  appointed  to  attend  and  granted  the  sum  of  $300.00  for 
expenses. 

This  was,  I  need  not  say,  a  very  great  boon  to  me.  I  was  at 
that  time,  so  I  thought,  probably  the  only  British  immigrant  not 
actually  impoverished,  who  in  forty  years  of  American  residence 
had  never  revisited  the  land  of  his  birth.  I  had  come  to  the 
Western  world  in  1869  so  that  more  than  a  generation  had  passed 
since  I  had  seen  the  old  country.  I  took  the  opportunity  of 
crossing  the  ocean  to  spend  a  few  weeks  with  relatives  in  Eng¬ 
land  ;  to  visit  my  birthplace ;  to  walk  on  the  streets  I  used  to  pass 
on  my  way  to  school  (and  find  how  narrow  they  had  become  in 
fifty  years) ;  and  to  see  the  house  I  was  born  in. 

The  Congress  was  a  very  dignified  body.  Ex-President  Lou- 
bet  of  France,  was  president.  King  Christian  of  Denmark  with 
his  personal  and  official  family  attended  the  opening  session ;  the 
entertainments  given  us  were  lavish.  A  great  dinner  and  recep¬ 
tion  in  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  as  the  Danes  call  their  city  hall,  was 
the  most  extravagant  thing  of  the  kind  I  have  ever  attended; 
champagne  was  much  more  plentiful  than  water  on  the  table. 

But  as  a  Conference  the  affair  was  simply  not  in  it  with 
ours.  Great  preparations  had  been  made.  Every  paper  pre¬ 
sented  had  been  received  three  months  ahead,  and  printed  in 
French,  which  was  the  language  of  the  Conference.  The  speak¬ 
ers  were  permitted  to  use  their  own  tongue  or  French  as  they 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


356 


chose.  It  was  absurd  to  listen  to  a  speaker  reading  a  long  paper 
while  you  held  the  text  in  full  in  your  hands,  but  that  was  their 
plan. 

The  general  tone  of  their  social  work  reminded  me  of  ours 
of  forty  years  ago.  They  had  scarcely  begun  to  conceive  of  pre¬ 
ventive  philanthropy  and  constructive  social  work  seemed  half 
a  century  ahead  of  them. 

I  was  honored  as  an  American  delegate  by  being  made  a  vice- 
president;  but  that  office  is  even  more  purely  a  complimentary 
one  than  it  is  in  our  National  Conference ;  altho  the  compliment 
was  emphasized  by  including  a  special  seat  on  the  platform ;  but 
all  I  had  to  do  was  to  occupy  the  chair  and  look  wise. 

There  was  a  speaker’s  stand  which  each  must  occupy  in  his 
turn.  As  is  often  the  case  with  Conferences  the  program  was 
overloaded  and  the  speakers,  except  those  reading  papers,  were 
called  down  at  the  end  of  a  very  brief  period.  Those  who  wished 
to  join  in  a  discussion  sent  their  names  to  the  president  who 
assigned  them  five,  ten  or  twenty  minutes,  as  he  thought  proper, 
and  then  called  them  up,  or  not,  as  the  discussion  went  on. 
There  was  a  fiery  Parisian  with  some  good  ideas  on  Mother’s 
Pensions  much  like  those  we  had  eight  or  ten  years  earlier;  but 
his  idea  of  relief  was  as  inadequate  as,  or  worse  than,  ours  used 
to  be  in  the  bad  old  niggardly  days.  I  sent  my  name  to  speak 
in  the  debate  which  followed  and  was  allotted  twenty  minutes, 
and  then  called  down  in  ten,  just  as  I  was  warming  up. 

Most  of  the  proceedings  were  in  French,  and  I  was  able  to 
understand  the  formal  speakers  by  following  the  copy.  The 
extempore  addresses  I  could  also  understand  when  they  were  in 
French,  if  a  German,  or  an  Englishman,  or  a  Frenchman  from 
the  provinces,  spoke.  President  Loubet,  being  from  Bordeaux, 
was  quite  intelligible.  But  when  a  Parisian  took  the  stand  I 
could  catch  at  the  most  about  one  word  in  ten.  I  was  like 
Chaucer’s  Prioress,  mine  was  “The  French  of  Stratforde  atte 
Bowe,  for  of  the  Frenche  of  Paris,  I  didde  notte  knowe”. 

One  of  the  marked  contrasts  between  the  congress  and  our 
Conference  was  in  the  courtesy  of  the  audience.  At  our  National 
Conference,  even  when  a  tedious  speaker  is  prosing  along,  an 
auditor  who  wishes  to  listen  is  secure  from  the  distraction  which 
comes  of  loud  talking  by  his  neighbors.  But  at  the  congress, 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913  357 

it  was  only  the  exceptionally  dignified  or  forceful  speaker  who 
was  not  disturbed.  This  discourtesy  was  specially  noticeable 
among  the  supposed-to-be-polite  Frenchmen,  whose  assigned 
seats  were  all  together;  their  rudeness  on  several  occasions  made 
me  furious. 

We  had  five  or  six  American  delegates  and  we  all  sat  together 
until  I  was  made  vice-president  and  had  to  move  to  a  seat  of 
honor.  Among  them  was  Miss  Sadie  American,  who  presented 
a  paper  on  the  “ Jewish  Society  to  aid  Female  Immigrants”, 
which  was  interesting  and  valuable,  especially  at  an  interna¬ 
tional  gathering.  All  thru  her  address  the  French  delegates 
were  talking  and  laughing,  and  at  last  one  of  them  rose  and 
asserted  that  her  paper;  which  he  certainly  had  neither  heard 
not  read ;  was  proper  for  the  white  slave  congress,  which  was  to 
meet  in  Milan  in  a  few  weeks,  and  not  here.  The  president 
seemed  to  be  of  the  same  opinion  and  Miss  American,  who  was 
not  more  than  half  thru,  was  given  two  minutes  to  close.  They 
could  not  understand  any  effort  for  helping  virtuous  women, 
except  in  the  way  of  charity  to  widows  with  children. 

The  very  next  day  a  Frenchwoman,  representing  the  prison 
work  of  the  Salvation  Army,  was  allowed  nearly  a  full  hour  to 
read  a  prosy  paper  which  we  all  had  in  full  in  our  hands.  To 
her  even  the  Frenchmen  were  polite,  though  I  doubt  they  listened 
they  did  keep  quiet. 

Two  men  stood  out  at  the  congress  head  and  shoulders  above 
the  rest  for  good  sense  and  good  feeling;  Charles  S.  Loch,  secre¬ 
tary  of  the  London  C.  O.  S.,  and  Emil  Munsterberg,  head  of 
Berlin’s  public  relief.  When  either  of  them  spoke  everybody 
listened;  and  they  both  used  intelligible  French.  I  had  met 
Munsterberg  when  he  was  studying  charities  in  the  United 
States  and  had  attracted  his  attention  by  an  article  on  mother’s 
pensions  vs.  orphan’s  homes  which  he  highly  commended ;  he  was 
strong  for  the  pension  system.  Mr.  Loch  attended  our  National 
Conference  in  Grand  Rapids,  and  had  sent  a  paper  to  be  read 
at  Washington  in  ’85.  It  was  pleasant  to  renew  acquaintance 
with  them. 

When  it  came  time  to  decide  on  the  next  place  of  meeting,  in 
1915,1  conceived  the  idea  of  getting  them  to  come  to  the  United 
states  and  showing  them  how  a  Conference  ought  to  be  run;  so 


358 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


I  cabled  Bicknell  in  Washington;  asking  him  to  get  Pres.  Taft’s 
authority  to  invite  the  congress  to  meet  in  our  Capital.  I  don’t 
know  whether  Bicknell  could  not  reach  the  president,  or  whether 
he  did  not  approve ;  at  any  rate  I  got  no  answer  and  London  was 
chosen  for  the  congress  of  1915. 

A  few  months  later  I  was  appointed  reporter  for  the  United 
States  on  mental  defectiveness ;  and  instructed  to  have  my  report 
ready  by  October  1914,  for  the  Congress  meeting  in  June  1915. 
I  got  it  ready;  a  careful  statement  of  American  institutions  and 
laws ;  but  the  great  war  wiped  out  any  chance  for  the  congress  of 
1915  along  with  so  much  else;  and  it  has  not  been  resumed. 

The  Danish  people  were  as  good  to  us  as  they  knew  how  to 
be,  and  I  enjoyed  my  visit  to  their  beautiful  city.  I  hunted  for 
“slums”  in  Copenhagen,  and  could  not  find  them.  But  the  more 
I  saw  of  the  European  congress,  the  prouder  I  was  of  our  Amer¬ 
ican  Conference. 

In  Denmark,  I  visited  several  of  their  poor-houses,  in  Copen¬ 
hagen  and  other  cities,  which  are  on  an  admirable  system.*  At 
Rothskilde,  the  ancient  capital,  I  saw  an  agricultural  high  school 
which  filled  me  with  envy  for  our  farmer  boys;  and  a  co-opera¬ 
tive  marketing  plant  for  eggs  and  pork,  which  helped  to  explain 
how  it  came  that  Denmark ;  from  being  almost  the  poorest  coun¬ 
try,  per  capita,  in  Europe;  had  in  twenty-five  years  become  the 
richest.  This  last  made  me  wish  our  farmers  could  learn  to 
co-operate. 

I  crossed  the  ocean  eastward  in  a  Scandinavian-American 
boat,  which  made  the  passage  going  north  of  the  British  Isles 
calling  at  Christiansand  and  Christiana,  Norway,  before  docking 
at  Copenhagen.  Among  the  passengers  was  a  very  dear  pupil 
of  mine,  Florence  Lattimer,  a  member  of  the  best  beloved  of  all 
my  classes  in  the  New  York  school  of  philanthropy,  that  of  1905, 
the  first  to  graduate;  Jacob  Biis  and  his  wife  were  passengers, 
and  several  other  social  workers.  It  was  an  ideal  voyage  in 
congenial  company.  When  I  returned  in  the  Baltic  of  the  White 
Star  Line,  the  contrast  was  painful,  both  as  to  the  ship  and  the 
fellow  passengers. 

Coming  home  we  arrived  off  Sandy  Hook  at  night  and 

♦See  in  “The  Almshouse”  published  by  the  Russel  Sage  Foundation, 
pp.  193-197,  an  account  of  these  institutions. 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913 


359 


anchored  in  the  Narrows.  At  dav-break,  I  went  on  deck  and  saw 
Staten  Island  to  the  left,  Brooklyn  Heights  on  the  right,  and  the 
Goddess  in  the  distance  and  I  felt  a  sensation  of  home-coming 
which  was  really  intense.  I  had  seen  nothing  that  looked  so  good 
to  me  since  we  steamed  out  of  the  harbor  ten  weeks  before. 

I  suppose  some  immigrants  from  Europe  go  back  to  stay; 
just  as  some  people  leave  Indiana  for  New  York,  and  are  content. 
But  though  the  world  is  my  country  I  am  first  an  American  and  a 
Hoosier  at  that.  One  of  the  good  things  that  has  come  of  my 
retirement  is  that  I  may  make  my  home  in  my  well-beloved 
adopted  state. 


In  Boston  Once  More,  in  1911 

No  city  in  the  Union,  perhaps  none  in  the  world  has  shown 
a  finer  spirit  of  social  work  than  Boston.  The  first  Conference 
that  was  held  there,  in  1881,  had  been  a  memorable  occasion. 
The  Conference  was  taking  shape  and  many  things  were  begun 
there.  Now  in  1911,  after  thirty  years  growth  the  Conference 
came  again  with  ten  times  as  many  delegates  and  a  program 
many  times  larger;  with  an  almost  infinitely  wider  horizon.  If 
vigorous  growth  is  the  best  evidence  of  healthy  life  that  surely 
was  demonstrated. 

One  notable  new  committee  reporting  was  on  aThe  Church 
in  Charity”.  This  was  the  topic  at  the  Sunday  night  session  and 
Rev.  Samuel  McChord  Crothers  was  one  of  the  speakers.  He 
gave  us  a  wonderful  address  in  his  inimitable  style  and  I  wanted 
it  in  full  in  the  proceedings.  Whether  the  address  was  in  manu¬ 
script  or  not,  I  do  not  know,  at  any  rate  I  had  not  secured  it; 
it  had  been  taken  stenographically  and  the  report  was  fairly 
accurate;  but  it  had  lost  the  charm  and  sparkle  of  its  spoken 
form. 

I  sent  a  copy  of  the  reporter’s  notes  to  Mr.  Crothers,  and 
begged  him  to  revise  them  for  publication ;  as  he  did  not  answer, 
I  sent  it  a  second  time,  and  again  he  failed  to  reply.  Despairing 
of  his  doing  the  work  I  took  the  notes  and  with  my  own  vivid 
recollection  of  what  he  had  said,  I  re-wrote  it  in  as  near  an 
attempt  at  his  style  as  I  could  command ;  putting  in  some  things 
I  remembered  which  the  stenographer  had  not  caught,  and  one 
good  thing  he  had  said  on  a  previous  occasion  which  was  appro- 


360 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


priate.  Then  I  sent  him  a  copy  of  my  revision  and  told  him  if 
it  was  not  satisfactory  I  could  wait  two  weeks  for  his  correction, 
but  that  if  he  did  not  answer  within  that  time  I  should  accept 
silence  as  consent  and  send  it  to  the  printer.  Mr.  Crothers 
promptly  replied  that  my  revision  was  quite  satisfactory  and  T 
might  print  it  under  his  name. 

The  position  of  editor  brings  many  trials,  but  it  has  its  com¬ 
pensations.  On  one  occasion,  when  Judge  Mack  had  spoken  to 
two  different  audiences  at  the  same  Conference  on  similar  topics, 
I  took  the  two  addresses  and  combined  them,  ironing  out  the 
seams  as  carefully  as  I  could.  I  thought  the  Judge  had  not 
noticed  what  I  had  done  until  he  jokingly  told  me  that  it  was 
not  such  a  very  bad  job  tho  the  junctures  were  plain  to  him. 

On  another  occasion  I  condensed  a  paper  of  12,000  words  to 
6,000.  The  author  had  declared  that  condensation  would  spoil 
it  but  when  I  sent  the  revision  to  him  for  criticism  he  was  gen¬ 
erous  enough  to  confess  that  he  liked  my  revised  version  better 
than  his  own  original.  But  many  authors  were  not  so  com¬ 
plaisant  and  my  editing  aroused  some  complaints  especially  as 
the  material  for  the  volume  increased  in  amount  and  had  to  be 
cut  down  seriously. 

The  Associated  Societies 

The  possibility,  or  the  necessity,  of  the  growth  of  the  National 
Conference  from  a  meeting  of  individuals  to  a  great  congress 
of  associations;  was  a  gradual  development  in  the  organization; 
as  in  my  mind.  As  it  slowly  dawned  on  me  I  began  consciously 
to  direct  and  foster  it.  I  never  paraded  the  idea  not  even  to  the 
executive  committee.  I  tried  to  let  the  growth  be  simple  and 
natural.  I  was  afraid  if  I  made  what  I  was  hoping  for  too  evi¬ 
dent  some  of  the  members  would  balk;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact 
I  was  by  no  means  certain  that  many  of  them  fully  realized  what 
was  happening  or  sympathized  with  my  ambitions.  Naturally 
the  question  of  limitation  came  up.  When  we  advertised  these 
co-operating  associations  in  our  programs;  notwithstanding  any 
disclaimer  of  responsibility,  we  were  in  effect  endorsing  them. 

Some  of  the  societies  which  came  into  line  were  of  such 
importance  and  dignity  that  their  presence  strengthened  the 
Conference  itself,  as  well  as  increased  its  membership.  This 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913 


361 


was  true  of  the  Jewish  Conference  of  Charities  which  was  among 
the  first  to  hold  its  biennial  meetings  regularly  with  us.  The 
St.  Vincent  de  Paul  Society  was  another  strong  organization 
which  first  met  with  us  in  Richmond  when  Mr.  Mulry,  who  was 
distinctly  at  the  head  of  Catholic  charities  in  New  York;  was 
president;  and  again  in  Boston;  other  societies  soon  saw  the 
advantage  of  the  associated  plan. 

I  suggested  to  the  executive  committee  that  it  pass  a  resolu¬ 
tion  that  the  privilege  of  our  program  be  restricted  to  societies 
applying  for  it  in  plenty  of  time;  and  that  it  was  to  be  granted 
each  one  by  a  formal  vote  each  year.  This  was  not  a  perfunctory 
requirement,  altho  there  was  only  one  occasion  of  the  privilege 
being  refused.  This  occurred  at  Boston.  When  the  executive 
committee  met  with  the  local  committee  to  make  arrangements, 
an  application  came  from  the  Florence  Crittenden  Society,  to  be 
put  on  the  program.  To  this  the  Boston  people  demurred;  altho 
most  of  the  Florence  Crittenden  homes  were  well  conducted, 
the  one  in  Boston  was  in  disfavor  with  some  of  the  local  social 
workers.  Its  management  was  far  from  what  it  should  be,  and 
the  local  people  said  it  must  not  receive  the  endorsement  of  the 
National  Conference.  Accordingly  the  application  was  politely 
refused,  and  the  reason  why  was  given;  with  the  utmost  cour¬ 
tesy  but  equal  firmness.  This  caused  some  resentment  at  first, 
but  its  final  results  were  good.  The  society  investigated  its  Bos¬ 
ton  branch;  found  that  the  criticisms  were  just  and  took  meas¬ 
ures  to  remedy  the  evils  complained  of. 

Every  year,  more  societies  came  with  us.  They  brought  us 
more  members,  and  they  added  to  the  value  of  the  Conference 
to  the  city  which  entertained  us  by  not  only  bringing  a  larger 
number  of  people  but  keeping  them  for  a  longer  time  as  the 
auxiliary  societies  met  for  two  or  three  days  before  the  Confer¬ 
ence  itself. 

The  widening  of  the  scope  of  the  Conference  and  the  coming 
in  of  the  various  associations  had  one  annoying  effect.  A  few 
people  who  represented  state  boards  felt,  that,  as  people  in  their 
position  had  begun  the  Conference,  it  belonged  to  them.  Under 
the  new  regime  they  were  no  longer  the  all  important  figures 
and  they  resented  it.  After  trying  on  several  occasions  to  stay 
the  development  they  disliked  they  decided  to  cut  loose  and 


362 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


start  a  new  assocaition  of  their  own.  This  lasted  for  a  few 
years  but  it  attracted  nobody  but  the  small  group  who  fostered 
it  and  I  think  has  now  ceased  to  exist.  All  the  most  influential 
men  in  state  charities  work  remained  loyal  to  the  National  Con¬ 
ference;  and  the  defection  of  the  few  sore-heads  was  hardly 
noticed. 

The  Second  Time  in  Cleveland,  1912 

The  trend  away  from  remedies  and  towards  preventives; 
which  had  marked  the  progress  of  the  Conference  for  forty  years 
had  great  emphasis  and  some  acceleration  at  Cleveland.  This 
was  marked  in  the  president’s  address  and  in  every  committee’s 
report,  as  was  also  the  inevitable  correlation  of  preventive 
agencies.  Problems  of  labor,  of  disease,  of  education  and  even 
of  taxation;  were  shown  to  be  inextrieally  entangled  with  those 
of  charity  and  correction.  Anyone  who  came  to  the  Conference 
with  his  little  panacea  for  social  ill  tied  up  in  a  neat  bundle, 
was  confronted  by  a  host  of  people  who  asked  many  questions 
which  the  panacea-maker  had  never  thought  of  and  could  not 
answer.  The  social  student  of  fifty  years  hence  who  shall  wish 
to  know  what  social  workers  and  social  reformers  thought  and 
talked  about  and  were  trying  to  do,  in  the  early  years  of  the 
twentieth  century,  may  find  almost  complete  instruction  in  the 
six  hundred  and  forty-four  pages  of  the  proceedings  of  1912. 

No  wonder  some  of  the  old  members  who  conceived  of  the 
Conference  as  a  place  to  meet  and  discuss  the  work  of  organized, 
legalized  boards  of  charities  and  who  had  somewhat  grudgingly 
admitted  the  charity  organization  societies  with  the  many  new 
problems  they  presented,  were  indignant  and  even  bewildered. 
A  few  of  these  attempted  between  the  sessions  of  1912  and  1913 
to  radically  reform  the  Conference  by  bringing  it  back  to  its 
first  status. 

A  letter  from  Frank  Sanborn,  the  father  of  the  Conference, 
written  to  me  in  May,  1913,  expresses  the  view  of  the  more 
unselfish  among  the  conservatives  so  well  that  I  give  a  few 
paragraphs  from  it.  After  alluding  to  a  personal  attack  made 
on  me  by  a  member  whom  I  had  offended  by,  as  he  thought,  frus¬ 
trating  his  ambition  to  be  president  and  who  when  he  attacked 
me  had  made  the  natural  mistake  of  measuring  me  and  my 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913 


\ 


363 


motives  by  himself  and  his  own ;  and  disclaiming  any  sympathy 
with  the  gentleman  in  his  personal  grievance ;  he  says : 

“Our  annual  meetings  have  grown  so  large  as  to  be  unwieldly, 
and  this  by  their  inclusion  of  topics  that  could  be  better  con¬ 
sidered  in  an  organization  for  the  reconstruction  of  civilized 
society,  a  proper  end,  perhaps,  but  one  for  which  the  Confer¬ 
ence  of  Charities  was  not  created.  Ours  is  a  much  humbler  but 
still  an  important  aim  *  *  *  *  viz:  the  co-operation  of 

public  officials  and  private  philanthropists  in  classifying  and 
standardizing  the  administration  of  charities,  private  and  public 
and  the  introduction  of  prison  science  *  *  *  *  in  the  man¬ 
agement  of  prisons,  etc.  *  *  *  *. 

If  now  we  could  drop  some  of  these  twining  plants  of  general 
philanthropy  and  paternalism  that  have  clasped  the  trunk 
*  *  *  *  of  our  banian  tree  of  charities  and  correction,  we 

could  probably  reduce  our  expenses  and  the  size  of  our  volume; 
make  our  meetings  more  useful  and  address  the  public  more 
effectively  on  fewer  subjects  than  we  now  do  with  our  universal 
appeals  to  the  spirit  of  novelty  and  change.” 

Mr.  Sanborn  expressed  the  views  of  the  conservatives  who 
wanted  to  reform  us  backwards;  but  the  opposite  trend  was  too 
strong  for  them  and  him.  I  had  much  sympathy  with  him,  in 
fact  I  agreed  with  him  pretty  well  except  in  opinion.  When  a 
parent  sees  his  offspring  grow  into  an  adult  in  whom  the  family 
traits  have  dwindled  until  the  creature  looks  like  a  member  of 
a  different  breed,  the  poor  old  father  feels  that  Nature  has 
defrauded  him  and  resents  the  process  of  evolution.  I  confess 
to  have  suffered  much  the  same  feeling  with  regard  to  one  or  two 
favorite  projects  of  my  own  which  grew  away  from  my  intentions 
for  them. 

Like  many  another  useful  man,  Mr.  Sanborn  builded  better 
than  he  knew  when  he  initiated  the  National  Conference  in  1874; 
or  to  change  the  metaphor,  he  had  no  idea  “how  great  a  matter  a 
little  fire  kindleth”. 

President  Mack  in  his  address  put  it  forcibly;  he  said  “For 
some  years,  we  have  been  passing  beyond  the  age  of  mere  preven¬ 
tive  work.  Eradication  of  evil  is  not  enough.  Constructive 
philanthropy  demands  that  it  be  replaced  by  the  positive  good ;” 
and  he  went  on  to  show  how  this  principle  applied  in  field  after 


364 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


field  of  social  work.  He  said  “In  the  past  few  years,  a  voice  never 
silent  in  the  history  of  the  world,  has  been  growing  deeper  and 
louder,  the  voice  of  men  calling  unto  men,  not  for  alms,  not  for 
charity,  but  for  justice;  and  this  body,  tho  it  remain  a  Confer¬ 
ence  of  Charities  and  Correction,  will  more  and  more  in  the 
course  of  time  become  a  national  conference  for  the  considera¬ 
tion  of  those  measures  which  in  dealings  between  individuals 
and  between  the  individual  and  the  state  will  accord  to  each  man 
that  justice  which  is  his  due.  *  *  *  *  It  demands  that 

society  in  its  organized  capacity  shall  secure  each  individual  in 
the  full  enjoyment  of  all  those  fundamental  rights,  without  which 
no  human  soul  can  fulfil  his  God  given  destiny.  As  we  advance 
in  civilization  they  will  increase  in  number  and  broaden  in 
extent.” 

Judge  Mack  voiced  the  general  sentiment  of  the  Conference 
and  those  who  wanted  to  emulate  Canute  had  to  give  way,  tho 
some  of  them  made  themselves  quite  disagreeable  about  it.  For¬ 
tunately  for  the  Conference,  the  matter  was  kept  off  the  floor, 
and  no  one  was  much  worried  but  myself.  The  reform  which 
changed  the  name  from  “Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction” 
to  “Conference  of  Social  Work”  had  its  origin  in  this  disagree¬ 
ment  between  conservatives  and  progressives.  When  the  out¬ 
ward  and  visible  sign  came  it  was  evidence  of  an  inward  and 
spiritual  reality  which  had  long  existed. 

Seattle  in  1913,  The  Fortieth  Conference 

It  really  seemed  at  Seattle  that  we  had  reached  the  culmina¬ 
tion  of  the  long  steady  advance ;  from  relief  to  social  reconstruc¬ 
tion  ;  as  the  object  of  the  Conference.  The  president’s  address 
was  on  “Social  Justice”.  One  committee  after  another  followed 
his  lead.  Organizations  that  once  seemed  remote  from  philan¬ 
thropic  effort  in  their  scope,  were  represented  as  participants ; 
most  notably  the  commercial  organizations;  the  boards  of  trade; 
chambers  of  commerce,  and  their  congeners;  whose  social  work 
was  set  forth  by  a  committee  on  “The  Relation  of  Commercial 
Organizations  to  Social  Welfare,”  which  offered  papers  by  mem¬ 
bers  of  chambers  of  commerce,  development  boards  and  similar. 
The  topic  of  “The  Church  and  Social  Work”  was  explained  in  a 
way  that  showed  something  radically  different  from  the  ideas  of 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908-1913  365 

the  old  church  aid  societies;  the  committee  on  “Standards  of 
Living  and  Labor”  discussed  wages  and  work  conditions  as 
affected  by  legislation ;  and  one  member  of  it  presented  “Indus¬ 
trial  Diseases”  as  the  facts  had  never  been  brought  together  be¬ 
fore.  The  committee  on  “Health  and  Sanitation”  had  developed 
into  “Health  and  Productive  Power”  and  stressed  the  co-ordina¬ 
tion  of  official  and  private  activities  along  with  that  social  book¬ 
keeping  we  call  “Vital  Statistics”.  The  committee  on  “Families 
and  Neighborhoods”  discussed  not  relief  of  the  poor  but  social 
surveys  and  working  programs  for  city  development.  Mr.  San¬ 
born  might  well  have  said,  as  he  did  after  the  Cleveland  meeting 
in  1912/ that  the  Conference  was  becoming  “an  organization  for 
the  reconstruction  of  civilized  society”. 

When  I  edited  the  volume  I  began  to  wonder  whether  we  had 
not  gone  to  a  new  extreme  ;  whether  we  were  not  in  danger  of 
forgetting  that  not  all  of  the  world’s  woes  are  due  to  social  condi¬ 
tions  ;  but  that  some  of  them  have  intrinsic  and  subjective 
causes ;  that  some  poverty  is  due  to  the  individual  faults  of  the 
sufferers. 

The  president  declared  that  the  closing  session  at  Cleveland 
the  year  before,  had  marked  the  end  of  the  second  era  of  thought 
and  discussion  in  Conference  history — the  era  of  prevention ;  the 
first  having  been  the  era  of  relief ;  and  that  the  third  era  that 
of  construction ;  had  now  begun.  He  reminded  us  that  the  prob¬ 
lems  of  life  which  the  Conference  of  1912  had  been  discussing 
became  the  issues  in  the  most  significant  presidential  campaign 
in  half  a  century ;  that  many  of  the  Conference  leaders  had  gone 
into  political  action  to  make  their  social  beliefs  effective;  some 
of  them  aiding  to  give  a  new  objective  to  a  party  whose  course 
had  long  been  erratic ;  some  clinging  to  the  wreck  of  the  once 
dominant  political  power,  believing  its  machinery  could  be 
made  effective  to  bring  about  social  and  economic  reforms ;  some 
assisting  at  the  birth  of  a  new  party  brought  into  life  with  a 
fervor  like  that  of  a  new  religion.  And  then  he  told  us  that  not 
by  machinery,  political  or  social ;  not  by  enacting  laws,  no  matter 
how  wholesome;  can  social  justice  be  secured.  Wise  laws,  better 
governmental  methods,  indeed,  we  must  have,  but  regeneration 
must  come  from  within.  Social  justice  demands  a  sense  of  social 
stewardship  on  the  part  of  those  of  larger  knowledge  and  power; 


366 


Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


demands  that  workers  of  every  class  *  *  *  *  shall  be  hon¬ 

est,  sincere  and  faithful.  To  cry  for  social  justice  is  easy,  to 
attain  it,  a  long  and  wearisome  task.  It  seems  definite;  but  it 
is  only  to  be  reached  by  the  individual  doing  the  thousand  and 
one  common-place  things  that  make  up  the  daily  routine  of  life 
according  to  ideas  of  unselfish  fairness  and  ideals  of  service.  And 
some  who  had  begun  to  nurse  the  fond  belief  that  the  world  was 
to  be  saved  by  majority  votes  for  better  laws ;  or  by  the  energy 
of  an  inspired  minority  overcoming  the  inertia  of  a  lethargic 
mass;  were  brought  back  to  the  salutary  truth  that  salvation 
comes  to  us  one  by  one;  that  the  world  cannot  be  saved  wholesale. 

Before  we  went  to  Seattle,  I  had  notified  the  executive  com¬ 
mittee  that  I  contemplated  other  work  and  had  asked  them  to 
appoint  a  new  secretary  before  the  conference  should  meet  allow¬ 
ing  me  to  act  as  emeritus  and  to  transfer  the  burden  to  new 
shoulders  without  friction.  But  my  resignation  was  given  to 
take  effect  at  their  convenience  and  they  decided  I  must  carry 
thru  the  1913  meeting.  The  chairman  of  the  nominating  com¬ 
mittee  at  Seattle  begged  me  to  re  consider  and  did  his  best  to 
make  me  change  my  mind  and  only  desisted  when  he  saw  that  I 
was  not  so  much  leaving  the  Conference  as  undertaking  a  new 
and  attractive  work. 

I  had  held  the  position  of  secretary  for  nine  years;  or  thir¬ 
teen,  if  I  counted  my  first  four  years  as  a  volunteer  worker ;  and 
that  is,  for  me,  a  long,  long  time  on  one  job  no  matter  how  good 
a  one.  Then  I  was  getting  old,  in  years  at  least,  and  I  had  long 
determined  to  resign  before  any  one  should  even  hint  that  it  was 
time  for  a  younger  man  in  my  place. 

I  had  seen  the  attendance  grow  from  two  hundred  and  fifty 
to  twenty-five  hundred;  the  paid  membership  from  none  to 
thirty-five  hundred.  Simultaneously  with  the  evolution  of  the 
“charity  agent”  of  1880,  into  the  “social  worker”  of  1910;  and 
by  the  action  of  similar  causes;  the  Conference  had  evolved  from 
the  narrow  scope  of  “Charities  and  Correction”  to  the  wide  one 
of  “Social  Work”.*  The  tiny  seed  which  I  had  helped  Mr.  Fair- 
child  to  plant  in  1884  had  sprouted  and  grown  into  a  big  tree 

♦The  new  name  came  a  few  years  later,  but  the  thing  had  come  to  he, 
long  before  the  name  was  changed. 


As  Secretary — Third  Series,  1908*1913  367 

in  whose  branches  much  familiar  domestic  poultry  and  some 
stranger  fowls  were  coming  to  roost. 

I  had  won  over  an  increasing  number  of  social  organizations 
to  hold  their  meeting  with  and  practically  to  recognize  the 
hegemony  of  the  National  Conference.  While  it  had  not  taken 
the  name  it  had  really  become  that  “Congress  of  Conferences” 
whose  possibility  I  had  dimly  glimpsed  in  1892.  The  Conference 
had  arrived  at  the  place ;  or  nearly  at  the  place ;  of  which  I  had 
dreamed  for  it  and  it  seemed  to  have  envisaged  its  splendidly 
enlarged  task. 

I  was  beginning  to  wonder  what  was  to  be  the  next  forward 
movement.  An  incorrigible  adventurer,  I  could  not  be  content 
merely  to  stand  still  and  consolidate  what  we  had  achieved.  I 
come  of  a  restless  breed  that  is  never  satisfied  to  leave  well 
enough  alone.  The  urge  to  progress;  or  perhaps  I  ought  to  say 
to  change ;  at  any  rate,  to  a  hazard  of  new  fortune ;  was  as  strong 
in  me  as  ever  but  I  lacked  a  vision.  I  was  in  danger  of  the  fate 
of  the  radical  who,  having  won  the  battles  of  his  youth,  in  his  age 
turns  conservative  of  the  fruits  of  his  early  victories. 

My  work  as  secretary  had  gradually  come  to  be  almost  wholly 
concerned  with  the  mechanism  of  the  Conference.  For  myself 
above  all  things  I  dreaded  stagnant  officialism.  To  cease  con¬ 
structive  effort  and  succumb  to  routine  performance  of  official 
duty  meant  to  change  my  whole  moral  being ;  it  meant  to  be  old 
and  settled;  to  have  my  spiritual  arteries  harden.  To  work  out 
a  lot  of  executive  detail;  to  create  a  firm  financial  basis  with 
which  to  replace  the  more  exciting  shaky  one  we  had  been  on  so 
long;  and  incidently  have  a  good  easy  time  and  earn  a  larger 
salary — had  little  attraction  for  me.  Detail  of  financial  trans¬ 
actions  always  repelled  me;  I  had  been  compelled  to  do  much  of 
it  but  I  hated  it;  there  were  plenty  of  men  who  could  do  that 
better  than  I  and  who  perhaps  even  liked  that  sort  of  thing. 

Then  some  purely  personal  considerations  came  in.  I  had 
lost  my  dear  wife  and  my  children  were  scattered  over  the  land. 
I  was  alone  in  the  lovely  little  home-nest  which  my  lover  and  I, 
with  painful  economy  and  self-denial,  had  built  for  our  green 
old  age  together.  I  needed  something  vital  and  adventurous  to 
keep  me  from  brooding,  to  take  me  out  of  myself. 


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Adventures  with  the  National  Conference 


I  was  offered  something  new;  something  that  had  not  been 
done;  a  young  man’s  job;  a  chance  for  work  of  the  kind  I  loved 
the  best  and  was  best  fit  for;  active  propaganda  of  a  cause  in 
which  I  believed  enthusiastically ;  one  of  the  forward  movements 
most  needing  promotion  in  the  nation ;  and  in  one  department  of 
which  I  had  been  successful  before  I  took  the  Conference  secre¬ 
taryship. 

I  was  assured  by  those  who  wanted  me  that  circumstances 
had  conspired  to  make  me  the  one  man  available  who  was  best 
fitted  for  the  task.  It  meant  to  travel  far  and  wide  over  the 
land;  to  meet  thousands  of  people;  in  hundreds  of  audiences;  in 
forty-eight  states;  with  no  anxiety  about  finances;  no  executive 
details  to  worry  about;  nothing  to  do  but  to  convert  the  people 
of  the  United  States  to  my  way  of  thinking  about  the  treatment 
of  the  feeble-minded ;  and  then  get  them  to  put  it  into  operation. 
A  positive,  objective  piece  of  work,  which,  just  as  fast  and  as  far 
as  it  was  successful  would  have  results  that  could  be  seen  and 
measured. 

All  these  things  together — the  sense  of  achievement;  the 
doubt  about  the  next  step ;  my  lonesomeness  at  home ;  the  attrac¬ 
tion  of  a  big,  hard  job  that  I  thoroughly  believed  in;  were  too 
much  to  resist.  Once  more  I  turned  over  a  new  page  in  the  great 
Book  of  Life. 

When  the  parting  came  and  I  said  farewell  to  the  National 
Conference  as  its  secretary,  it  came  as  a  wrench.  I  loved  the 
Conference  and  every  one  of  its  members;  I  felt  they  loved  and 
trusted  me.  But  I  had  given  my  word  and  could  not  take  it  back 
even  had  I  desired  to  do  so;  and  I  went  op  to  a  new  adventure 
in  social  welfare  more  strange  and  exciting  than  any  which  had 
come  to  me  before. 


PART  FIVE 


ADVENTURES  IN  SOCIAL  EDUCATION 


(369) 


ADVENTURES  IN  SOCIAL  EDUCATION 


Chapter  One 

THE  SCHOOL  IN  NEW  YORK 

The  two  men  to  whom  most  of  the  credit  is  due  for  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  the  Schools  for  Social  Workers,  which  now  seem 
accepted  as  a  necessary  part  of  the  educational  system  in  many 
states,  are  Edward  T.  Devine  and  Graham  Taylor.  They  are  men 
who  differ  widely  in  many  respects  but  are  alike  in  being  essen¬ 
tially  socially-minded  and  in  possessing  insight,  determination, 
and  unbounded  energy. 

The  idea  of  a  school  of  the  kind  was  first  made  public  at  the 
National  Conference  in  Toronto  in  1897,  and  the  next  year  the 
New  York  Summer  School  of  Philanthropy  was  established.  It 
was  specially  designed  for  workers  in  organized  charity  and 
began  and  has  continued  as  a  six  weeks  course.  For  twenty-four 
years  this  school  has  been  filling  its  unique  place  in  the  nation. 
Many  people  who  are  now  leaders  in  the  philanthropic  endeavors 
of  the  country,  came  as  students  to  its  lectures  and  profited  by 
them  because  their  duties  at  home  had  given  them  the  first-hand 
contacts,  the  experience  in  case-work,  without  which  didactic 
instruction  is  of  little  value. 

At  the  New  York  Summer  School  what  the  pupils  get  from 
each  other  and  from  the  contacts  they  make  with  the  social  work 
of  the  great  city,  are  more  valuable  than  the  lectures  to  which 
they  listen.  Nowhere  more  than  here  is  it  so  plain  that  social 
work  must  be  done  socially  so  that  real  social-mindedness  is  the 
most  essential  thing  to  be  acquired.  I  had  the  privilege  of  lec¬ 
turing  occasionally  at  the  school  on  my  specialty  of  institution 
management,  particularly  for  the  feeble-minded,  and  in  the  sum¬ 
mer  of  1903,  I  gave  a  six-days  course  on  the  conduct  of  institu¬ 
tions  for  defectives  and  insane.  During  that  week  I  conducted 
parties  of  students  on  inspection  visits  to  some  of  the  New  York 
city  and  state  institutions. 


(37  ) 


372 


Adventures  in  Social  Education 


Those  early  days  were  very  interesting.  The  students  were 
mature  people  actually  engaged  in  some  form  of  social  work 
most  of  them  as  secretaries  or  agents  of  charity  organization 
societies.  They  had  a  background  of  social  knowledge  that  made 
the  lecturer’s  task  an  easy  one.  Phillip  W.  Ayres  was  the  director 
of  the  school  and  was  one  of  my  valued  friends  and  I  regarded 
my  work  among  the  students  as  a  high  privilege. 

During  the  summer  of  1911,  in  the  absence  of  Carl  Kelsey 
who  had  been  director  since  1905,  I  was  acting  director  of  the 
summer  school  for  its  six-weeks  term.  We  had  a  full  attendance 
that  year  and  I  made  friends  of  a  large  group  of  students.  It 
has  been  interesting  in  traveling  over  the  land  in  various  capaci¬ 
ties  for  many  years  past,  to  meet  students  of  those  early  days, 
who  are  now  widely  scattered  over  the  nation  and  to  have  them 
claim  me  as  friend  and  teacher.  As  a  man  gets  old,  personal 
ambition  fades;  his  hopes  are  no  longer  for  himself  but  for  his 
children  and  his  pupils.  *  To  meet  successful  men  and  women 
doing  useful  service  to  humanity,  and  have  them  remind  me  of 
lectures  of  mine  they  had  heard,  of  real  help  which  had  come 
from  me,  sometimes  even  that  my  influence  had  colored  their 
whole  career ;  these  are  among  the  wonderful  compensations  of  a 
life  spent  in  social  work;  which  make  such  trivial  matters  as 
lecture  fees  fade  into  insignificance.  They  are  high  places  of  life 
that  make  it  worth  living. 

Every  great  social  advance  has  a  leader  and  every  leader 
needs  a  backer.  The  leader  of  the  New  York  School  was  Edward 
T.  Devine,  his  backer  was  Robert  W.  de  Forest;  for  many  years 
president  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organization  Society.  Mr. 
de  Forest  is  a  man  to  whom  social  work  and  the  social  workers 
of  America  owe  a  debt  that  will  never  be  fullv  estimated ;  with- 
out  him,  or  some  one  like  him,  the  New  York  School  could  not 
have  existed,  and  without  the  example  and  leadership  of  the 
N.  Y.  School  it  would  have  been  long  before  the  cause  of  social 
education  would  have  reached  its  present  commanding  position. 
Mr.  de  Forest  saw  the  opportunity  and  not  only  contributed  lib¬ 
erally  but  induced  Mr.  John  Stewart  Kennedy  to  became  the 
angel  of  the  school.  The  first  moderate  endowment  was  avail¬ 
able  in  1904,  and  his  subsequent  gifts,  have  lent  it  permanent 
stability  and  have  helped  to  make  it  the  great  educational  insti¬ 
tution  for  the  social  workers  of  America. 


The  School  in  New  York  373 

It  was  for  me  a  fortunate  concurrence  of  circumstances,  in  the 
summer  of  1904,  that  the  National  Conference  needed  a  new 
secretary  ;  just  as  Devine  got  ready  to  develop  the  school  of 
philanthropy  from  its  six  weeks  summer  course  to  a  more  formal 
affair,  of  which  he  proposed  to  be  director  and  wanted  an  asso¬ 
ciate.  It  appeared  that  neither  the  school  nor  the  conference 
could  afford  to  employ  a  full-time  man  of  the  quality  they 
desired;  each  needed  one  with  some  ability  of  speech  who  knew 
social  work  and  was  capable  of  directing  it.  The  experience  I 
had  had  with  the  summer  school  during  its  existence  of  six 
years,  and  my  intimate  knowledge  of  the  Conference  for  twenty 
years,  made  me  seem  suitable  for  the  two  positions,  and  I  hap¬ 
pened  to  be  available.  So  the  two  places  were  offered  me  and 
were  gladly  accepted. 

In  theory  I  was  to  divide  my  time  and  energy,  one-third  to 
the  conference  and  two-thirds  to  the  school  and  the  salaries  were 
arranged  to  match.  But  it  soon  appeared  that  there  was  plenty 
of  opportunity  for  a  full-time  job  with  either  the  Conference  or 
the  school  alone. 

Because  we  were  rather  limited  financially  we  began  in  a 
somewhat  amateurish  way ;  most  of  our  lecturers  were  volun¬ 
teers,  and  few  could  be  called  on  for  systematic  courses.  So  it 
seemed  necessary  to  have  two  associate  directors ;  each  of  whom 
was  capable  of  giving  one  or  two  sustained  courses  of  lectures 
and  who  could  by  acting  as  presiding  officers  at  the  other  lec¬ 
tures,  lend  a  certain  unity  and  direction  to  the  course  of  instruc- 
tion.  My  fellow  associate-director  was  Anna  Garlin  Spencer 
whose  friendship  I  had  gained  when  we  met  at  the  International 
Congress  of  Philanthropy  in  Chicago,  in  1893,  when  she  preached 
the  Congress  sermon.  Devine  who  in  those  days  habitually 
loaded  himself  up  with  work  enough  for  two  ordinary  men,  was 
very  fully  occupied  as  secretary  of  the  New  York  C.  O.  S.  and 
editor  of  “Charities”,  (now  the  Survey)  and  the  directing  was 
left  chiefly  to  his  two  associates.  We  each  gave  as  many  lectures 
as  we  were  permitted ;  in  fact  one  of  the  few  very  slight  causes 
of  difference  which  ever  arose  between  Devine  and  myself  was 
that  I  wanted  to  do  more  lecturing  than  he  thought  was  proper 
for  a  director.  I  always  preferred  talking  to  any  other  work,  it 
is  by  far  the  easiest  thing  I  have  ever  found  to  do.  It  was  much 


374 


Adventures  in  Social  Education 


easier  for  me  to  give  some  needed  lectures  myself  than  to  hunt 
up  some  other  man  to  do  it  altho  possibly  not  so  well  for  the 
students. 

While  the  plan  of  using  many  occasional  lecturers,  mostly 
volunteers,  had  many  drawbacks,  it  had  some  advantages.  Our 
speakers  were  people  of  pretty  high  quality,  higher  than  one  could 
expect  often  to  secure  for  a  small  lecture  fee.  Whenever  some 
noted  public  man  came  to  the  city  we  tried  to  get  him  to  lecture 
to  our  students.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  of  Ireland,  gave  us  a 
talk  on  the  co-operative  system  among  the  Irish  farmers.  Emil 
Munsterberg  told  of  the  charities  of  Berlin.  Kev.  John  Graham 
Brooks  gave  us  a  brief  course  on  Community  problems.  We  had 
Prof.  Patten  for  a  series  of  talks  on  The  New  Basis  of  Civiliza¬ 
tion.  James  Bryce,  the  British  Ambassador,  talked  on  the  com¬ 
monwealth.  What  we  lacked  of  academic  system ;  and  I  confess 
we  lacked  a  great  deal;  was  partly  compensated  for  by  breadth 
of  information  and  the  culture  that  comes  of  contact  with  ex¬ 
ceptionally  gifted  people. 

We  had  among  our  speakers  either  as  occasional  lecturers, 
or  in  brief  courses,  the  most  prominent  social  workers  in  New 
York  and  many  from  other  parts  of  the  country.-  Such  people  as 
Florence  Kelly,  Jane  Addams,  Julia  Lathrop,  Graham  Taylor 
W.  H.  Allen,  and  others  of  equal,  or  almost  equal  power  and 
character,  helped  us.  When  we  studied  immigration  we  had 
Gino  Speranza  for  the  Italians  and  Rabbi  Blaustein  for  the  Rus¬ 
sian  Jews.  For  child-welfare,  we  had  Charles  Loring  Brace,  H. 
H.  Hart,  and  Charles  W.  Birtwell.  On  medical  social  work,  we 
heard  Alexander  Miller;  on  hospitals  and  hygiene  we  had 
the  chief  health  officer  of  the  city  and  others.  Samuel  J.  Bar- 
rows  of  the  N.  Y.  Prison  Association,  talked  about  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  criminals.  It  goes  without  saying  that  in  presiding  at 
such  lectures,  I  gained  immensely  myself.  My  two  years  as  as¬ 
sociate  director  of  the  New  York  School  made  a  valuable  addition 
to  my  own  social  education. 

Mrs.  Spencer  specialized  on  community  problems  and  in  the 
didactic  part  of  associated  charities.  My  specialty  was  public 
institutions  for  defectives,  insane,  paupers,  etc.,  for  which  my  ex¬ 
perience  as  a  state  board  secretary  and  as  superintendent  of  the 
school  for  feeble-minded  had  fitted  me. 


The  School  in  New  York 


375 


The  students  were  assigned  to  field  work  with  districts  of 
the  C.  O.  S.,  with  the  Children’s  Aid  Society  and  some  institu¬ 
tional  organizations,  and  much  of  this  work  was  very  useful  to 
them.  # 

One  afternoon  of  each  week  after  the  second  or  third  month 
of  the  term,  was  given  to  visiting  institutions  for  which  there 
is  so  large  an  opportunity  in  New  York.  We  visited  the  alms¬ 
house,  the  work-house,  and  the  hospital  on  Blackwell’s  Island; 
the  house  of  refuge,  and  the  institution  for  the  feeble-minded  on 
Randall’s  Island;  the  large  hospital  for  the  insane  on  Ward’s 
Island ;  the  great  Catholic  protectory,  and  many  other  of  the  vari¬ 
ous  institutions  for  children.  A  specially  interesting  trip  was 
to  the  New  York  Orphan  Asylum,  at  Hastings-on-Hudson,  which 
is  without  an  equal  in  the  country ;  another  was  to  the  Children’s 
Village  at  Dobb’s  Ferry,  a  unique  specimen  of  institutional  con¬ 
struction. 

One  day  we  crossed  the  river  to  New  Jersey  and  visited  the 
Hudson  county  insane  asylum  and  the  almshouse  at  Snake  Hill. 
The  day  before  this  visit,  I  had  lectured  on  the  Wisconsin  sys¬ 
tem  of  county  care  for  the  insane  and  had  told  the  students  of 
a  runaway  patient  I  had  seen  at  one  of  the  county  asylums, 
who  had  been  cured  of  his  desire  to  wander  by  being  given  the 
job  of  mail  carrier  which  involved  walking  two  miles  fb  the  post- 
office  twice  daily.  At  the  Hudson  county  asylum  as  we  entered 
the  office  we  saw  a  man  carrying  a  mail  bag  whom  I  instantly 
recognized  as  insane.  I  was  delighted  to  be  able  to  show  my 
students  a  New  Jersey  example  of  the  effects  of  freedom  in 
curing  crazy  people  of  the  run-away  tendency  which  close  de¬ 
tention  only  confirms. 

I  encouraged  the  students  to  take  the  civil-service  examina¬ 
tions  for  the  city  and  state  charities,  not  in  the  hope  of  getting 
positions  but  of  checking  up  their  acquisition  of  practical  knowl¬ 
edge.  Several  of  them  who  took  the  examination  for  institution 
inspection  got  high  places  on  the  list.  One  who  made  ninety- 
eight  per  cent,  told  me  “when  I  came  to  the  questions  about  in¬ 
spection,  I  answered  by  what  you  had  shown  me  in  our  institu¬ 
tion  visits,  rather  than  in  the  words  of  the  instruction  book.”  Of 
course  this  was  merely  an  example  of  the  advantage  which  clini¬ 
cal  instruction  has  over  didactic  lecturing,  or  text-book  study. 


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Adventures  in  Social  Education 


The  condition  of  matriculation  was  either  a  college  degree 
or  practical  experience  of  equal  value  in  fitting  the  student  to  ac¬ 
quire  what  we  had  to  teach.  We  had  many  college  graduates, 
and  they  were  not  always  the  best  students,  but  we  had  some  ex¬ 
ceptionally  brilliant  pupils  among  them.  Very  little  of  our 
teaching  was  from  text  books.  In  those  early  days,  Warner’s 
American  Charities,  and  one  or  two  of  Henderson’s  early  works 
were  almost  all  we  had.  I  used  the  National  Conference  Proceed¬ 
ings  freely  for  collateral  reading,  but  we  depended  mostly  on  oral 
instruction  and  required  the  students  to  take  notes,  write  them 
out  and  submit  them  for  criticism.  This  meant  a  vast  amount  of 
labor  for  the  directors,  but  was  possible  because  the  class  was 
small.  I  gave  a  pretty  full  course  of  lectures  on  institutional 
care,  much  of  the  instruction  being  quite  technical.  A  set  of 
notes  submitted  by  one  student  on  this  course  was  so  admirable, 
so  accurate,  full,  and  well  arranged,  that  I  preferred  them  to  my 
own  original  notes  prepared  for  the  lectures,  and  had  it  copied, 
with  only  two  or  three  corrections  for  my  own  future  use.  This 
student  was  exceptionally  brilliant,  but  there  were  many  others 
almost  as  talented.  They  were  a  delightful  group  of  people,  and 
many  of  them  are  now  occupying  high  positions  in  social  work. 

One  of  the  young  women  of  the  class  of  1905,  Miss  Mina 
G - ,  on  graduating,  had  offers  of  four  different  positions  and 

consulted  me  as  to  which  she  should  accept.  I  tried  to  help  her 

♦ 

choose,  but  before  she  had  decided  came  a  fifth  offer  which  she 
accepted.  It  was  to  be  educational  secretary  of  an  Associated 
Charities  in  a  large  manufacturing  city,  which  really  meant  to 
educate  the  citizens  in  their  important  duty  of  giving  money  lib¬ 
erally. 

Shortly  after  beginning  her  work  she  called  on  the  president  of 
a  large  corporation  for  a  subscription  and  was  turned  down ;  the 
gentlemen  saying  he  did  not  propose  to  waste  money  in  keeping  a 
bankrupt  organization  going.  This  piqued  the  educational  sec¬ 
retary  into  making  such  a  clear  and  forcible  setting  forth  of  the 
purposes  and  methods  of  the  society  that  she  got  a  handsome 
check  as  a  personal  contribution  from  him  ,and  another  in  the 
name  of  his  firm.  A  day  or  two  later  the  gentleman  called  up  the 

secretary  of  the  associated  charities,  saying  that  Miss  G - 

had  so  interested  him  in  the  work  that  he  would  like  to  help  with 


The  School  in  New  York 


377 


the  financial  campaign.  He  invited  the  secretary  to  dine  with 

him  on  Sunday  and  bring  Miss  G - with  him.  When  they 

came  he  told  them  that  he  feared  the  society  was  concentrating 
too  much  on  the  business  houses  down  town  and  neglecting  the 
numerous  factories  on  the  outskirts  and  he  helped  them  plan  a 
systematic  canvass.  Then  on  Monday  came  a  note  from  him  to 

Miss  G - ,  saying,  that  his  chauffeur  had  nothing  to  do  from 

8  :30  A.  M.  until  noon,  and  that  his  auto  was  at  her  service  during 
that  period  every  day,  to  take  her  to  the  more  distant  points  of 
the  city  on  her  collecting  tours.  The  gentleman  was  a  widower 
and  in  a  few  months  I  was  charmed  to  receive  their  wedding 
cards  and  a  year  later  to  be  invited  to  spend  a  week  or  two  at 
their  winter  home  in  the  Bermudas.  The  lady,  who  is  now  a 
widow,  is  at  present  occupying  one  of  the  most  important  posi¬ 
tions  in  social  work  in  the  District  of  Columbia. 

About  the  beginning  of  the  school  year  of  1905-’06,  I  was 
asked  by  the  director  of  the  training  school  for  nurses  of  the  New 
York  hospital  on  Blackwell’s  Island,  to  call  upon  her.  When  I 
did  so  she  asked  if  the  School  of  Philanthropy  would  not  help  her. 
She  declared  that  when  the  nurses  come  for  training  one  of  the 
first  things  they  have  to  be  taught  was  to  regard  the  patients 
as  subjects  of  scientific  treatment;  but  that  after  a  year  or  two 
they  were  in  danger  of  forgetting  that  the  people  were  not  mere 
cases  of  sickness  but  actually  human  beings ;  and  she  wanted  the 
school  to  “re-humanize  her  nurses.”  The  result  was  that  we  gave 
a  special  course  of  Wednesday  afternoon  lectures  at  the  nurses 
training  school,  to  which  we  took  many  of  our  best  lecturers, 
filling  in  ourselves  when  no  one  else  offered. 

At  the  National  Conference  in  Toronto,  Homer  Folks  had 
caught  the  idea  of  after-care  for  the  insane  and  got  the  State 
Charities  Aid  Association  in  sympathy  with  it.  He  conceived  the 
idea  of  making  this  a  feature  of  his  association,  beginning  with 
discharged  patients  from  the  Manhattan  State  Hospital.  Before 
making  definite  plans  it  was  necessary  to  get  actual  facts  and  he 
came  to  us  for  help,  hoping  to  use  students  of  the  school  to  col¬ 
lect  data  on  what  happened  to  recovered  or  convalescent  patients 
after  their  discharge. 

His  plan  was  to  select  some  patients  at  random  and  follow 
them  up.  I  suggested  the  advantage  of  taking  all  the  patients 


378 


Adventures  in  Social  Education 


who  had  left  the  hospital  during  a  definite  period  of  time  and 
making  a  very  thorough  investigation  of  the  present  condition 
of  all  who  could  be  found.  We  had  two  students  well  equip¬ 
ped  for  such  a  task;  each  was  a  graduate  nurse;  one  had  been 
superintendent  of  a  general  hospital,  and  the  other  had  had  thor¬ 
ough  training  in  the  care  of  the  insane.  They  were  women  of  fine 
personality  and  much  more  than  ordinary  ability  and  education. 
It  says  much  for  the  reputation  of  the  school  that  it  had  attracted 
students  of  such  quality. 

We  selected  the  period  from  October  1,  1905,  to  January  15, 
1906,  during  which  time  ninety  patients  had  been  discharged.  Of 
these  thirty-one  could  not  be  found,  although  the  lapse  of  time 
since  their  discharge  was  at  most  only  three  months.  But  thirty- 
two  of  the  women  and  twenty-one  of  the  men  were  discovered, 
some  doing  well,  some  in  danger  of  relapse,  one  or  two  in  very 
serious  condition.  It  appeared  certain  that  at  least  one-fifth  of 
the  whole  number  might  have  been  greatly  benefited  by  some 
proper  after-care  at  the  time  of  their  discharge.  On  the  basis  of 
the  report  the  association  began  its  extremely  useful  after-care 
work,  in  which  it  employed  as  agent  a  graduate  of  the  New  York 
School  of  Philanthropy.  This  is  now  a  regular  feature  of  the 
association’s  program,  and  extends  to  all  the  hospitals  of  the 
state.* 

At  the  end  of  the  second  year  of  full  time  work  an  additional 
endowment  from  Mr.  Kennedy  made  it  possible  to  pay  larger  sal¬ 
aries  to  directors  and  instructors.  The  National  Conference  was 
making  heavy  demands  on  my  time  and  the  part-time  system  for 
both  director  and  associates  was  dropped.  The  instruction  was 
reorganized  on  high  academic  standards  with  a  professional  col¬ 
lege  man  of  experience  and  ability  at  its  head.  The  faculty  of 
full-time  teachers  was  largely  increased ;  the  amateurs  were  called 
on  less  frequently ;  and  the  number  of  students  rapidly  increased. 
After  October,  1906,  I  gave  all  my  time  to  the  Conference.  Altho 
I  have  been  called  on  for  occasional  lectures  since,  the  regular 
work  of  the  school  is  for  me  a  memory,  but  it  is  one  of  the  happy 
ones  of  my  life. 

*See  in  the  proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  for  1907,  page  432, 
“A  Year’s  Work  in  After-care,”  by  Homer  Folks,  also  the  discussion  fol¬ 
lowing. 


Chapter  Two 


THE  SCHOOL  IN  CHICAGO 

What  Devine  was  for  the  school  in  New  York,  that  and  more 
was  Graham  Taylor  for  the  school  in  Chicago.  I  write  this  good 
man’s  name  with  love  and  respect  which  is  much  more  than  admi¬ 
ration.  When  the  history  of  the  social  movement  in  the  U.  S.  of 
the  most  socially  fruitful  forty  years  in  the  nation’s  life,  those 
from  1880  to  1920,  shall  be  written,  the  work  of  Graham  Taylor 
will  fill  a  wonderful  chapter.  No  more  socially-minded  man  has 
ever  lived. 

The  President  and  His  Home 

Taylor  saw  everything  in  terms  of  the  community  and  to  him 
“the  community”  was  no  mere  abstraction ;  it  was  a  group  of  men 
and  women  and  little  children,  whom  he  loved  and  to  serve  whom 
he  devoted  his  life.  And  few  men  have  been  more  successful  in 
social  service.  His  influence  on  social  affairs  of  almost  every 
kind  in  the  vast  seething  maelstrom  of  Chicago,  has  been  of  in¬ 
estimable  value.  I  know  little  of  his  work  as  professor 
of  applied  sociology  in  the  theological  seminary,  (of  which  he 
refused  the  president’s  chair),  but  I  am  ready  to  believe  that  his 
influence  and  example  in  that  department  of  human  effort,  has 
had  a  large  share  in  the  recent  movement  of  the  church  towards 
social  mindedness,  and  making  religion  a  seven  days  affair.  I 
count  it  one,  and  a  great  one,  among  the  many  happy  things 
of  my  life,  to  have  won  and  kept  his  lasting  friendship. 

My  first  visit  to  Graham  Taylor’s  home  in  the  settlement  was 
in  the  winter  of  1895,  at  the  house  in  which  it  began.  This  was 
before  Mr.  Taylor  had  found  its  luminous  name,  “The  Commons” 
which  now  carries  a  fine  message  to  social  workers,  thruout  the 
nation,  many  of  whom  caught  some  of  their  inspiration  from  resi¬ 
dence  there.  I  had  made  his  acquaintance  at  the  National 
Conference  and  we  had  felt  a  certain  kinship,  a  forecast  of  the 


(379) 


380 


Adventures  in  Social  Education 


brotherliness  we  were  to  gain  in  the  future.  The  house  was  in  an 
old  and  dilapidated  part  of  Chicago’s  west  side,  which  had 
escaped  the  cleaning-up  of  the  great  fire ;  a  district  which  is  now 
full  of  R.  R.  yards  and  factories,  it  was  then  all  tenements, 
shabby  little  stores  and  saloons.  It  was  an  old  fashioned  three- 
story  frame,  smoked  up  and  badly  needing  paint.  The  street 
level  had  been  raised  eight  feet  from  its  original  swamp  and  the 
front  door  was  reached  by  a  flight  of  steps  downward  from  the 
sidewalk.  The  steps  and  the  floors  creaked  with  every  footfall. 
Externally  the  house  was  about  as  unattractive  as  a  house  could 
be.  The  neighborhood  was  as  deplorable;  a  mere  slum.  On  the 
business  street  near  by  about  every  third  door  was  that  of  a 
saloon.  The  first  floor  of  the  house  was  in  class  rooms  and  club 
rooms.  Upstairs  lived  the  residents,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Taylor  ana 
their  four  children;  Rev.  Mr.  Boiler,  the  pastor  of  a  little  Con¬ 
gregational  church  a  few  squares  away,  and  his  wife  and 
children;  John  P.  Gavit,  author,  poet,  and  newspaper  man,  with 
his  wife  and  child.  Missionaries  in  the  heart  of  Africa  could 
hardly  present  a  greater  contrast  with  their  surroundings  than 
did  these  cultured  refined  people  in  such  a  neighborhood. 

On  the  day  of  my  visit,  Mr.  Taylor  and  I  had  a  date  to  go  to¬ 
gether  to  a  lecture  by  G.  Stanley  Hall,  at  which  I  hoped  to  get 
some  hints  for  my  work  in  teaching  the  feeble-minded.  On  our 
way  in  the  train  we  talked  of  the  settlement  and  he  asked  me, 
“Well,  Johnson,  what  do  you  really  think  about  it?”  I  told  him 
it  reminded  me  of  a  story  of  a  convivial  party  of  Scotchmen,  one 
of  whom  got  his  jag  earlier  than  the  rest  and  started  for  home; 
another  followed  him  shortly  after  and  found  number  one  sitting 
in  the  mud  holding  on  to  a  lamppost;  number  two  tried  to  get 
his  friend  up  on  his  feet  but  could  not  manage  it  so  he  said, 
“Old  fellow,  I  can’t  lift  you  up  but  I  can  sit  down  alongside  you,” 
and  did  so  in  the  mud.  I  said,  “Graham,  I  don’t  know  whether 
3^011  can  lift  up  your  neighbors,  but  Heaven  knows  3rou  have  sat 
down  in  the  mud  with  them.”  And  Graham  answered,  “Well, 
if  anyone  must  sit  in  the  mud,  why  not  I? 

People  who  did  not  know,  sometimes  said  the  settlement  on 
Union  Street  was  a  dreadful  place  in  which  to  bring  up  a  famity ; 
but  those  whose  privilege  it  is  to  know  the  Taylors  intimately, 
think  it  might  be  well  if  more  families  had  so  good  a  chance  at 


The  School  in  Chicago 


381 


upbringing.  When  we  thought  Graham  Taylor  was  sacrificing  not 
only  himself  but  his  family  to  his  social  instincts,  we  forgot  that 
“Whosoever  shall  seek  to  save  his  life  shall  lose  it ;  and  whosoever 
shall  lose  his  life  shall  preserve  it.” 

Before  I  began  work  with  the  Chicago  School  the  settlement 
had  grown  nearly  to  its  present  size  and  importance  and  the  well 
planned  and  commodious  building  on  Grand  Avenue  had  been  con¬ 
structed.  Among  the  many  pleasant  incidents  of  my  connection 
with  the  Chicago  school  was  my  residence  each  year  for  six  weeks 
in  the  winter  and  two  in  the  summer  at  the  Commons.  I  have 
visited  many  settlements  and  know  some  of  them  well,  but  no¬ 
where;  not  even  in  the  smaller  ones  where  the  residents  form  a 
group  of  eight  or  ten  intimates;  have  I  found  such  a  sense  of 
home-likeness. 

They  made  me,  for  the  time,  one  of  the  resident  family.  After 
my  third  or  fourth  visit  my  own  home  was  broken  by  the  death 
of  my  dear  wife,  and  the  scattering  of  my  children ;  and  for  many 
a  year  coming  to  the  Commons  was  home-coming  for  me 

After  a  busy  day  in  all  kinds  of  social  activity,  some  in  the 
settlement  itself,  most  of  them  in  different  city  offices,  the  resi¬ 
dents  gathered  in  the  dining-room;  and  tho  there  were  eighteen 
or  twenty  of  them  and  always  several  guests,  the  evening  meal 
was  a  real  family  party,  of  which  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Taylor  and  their 
dear  daughter  Leah  (dear  to  all  who  know  her)  were  the  cen¬ 
ter.  Occasionally  Katherine  coming  from  Vassar  where  she 
taught  literature,  or  Helen  (Mrs.  Carr)  and  her  husband  from 
nearer  by,  were  welcome  additions,  and  a  festal  day  would  be 
when  Graham  Komeyn  came  from  his  wanderings  over  the  world 
for  a  brief  visit. 

Every  evening  after  dinner  the  whole  resident  family  gath¬ 
ered  in  the  parlor  for  vespers.  A  hymn  or  two;  a  brief  respon¬ 
sive  reading;  a  little  talk  by  the  warden  or  some  favored  guest; 
a  story  of  recent  happenings  by  a  former  resident  who  was  re¬ 
visiting  his  old  home;  often  a  discussion  of  some  striking  social 
event  of  the  day  in  the  city  or  from  afar.  At  each  of  my  visits, 
I  was  called  on  at  one  of  my  first  evenings,  to  tell  my  social  ad¬ 
ventures  during  my  travels  since  I  had  last  met  with  them.  Sim¬ 
ple,  informal,  sincere,  with  no  least  slant  towards  sectarian¬ 
ism;  but  with  a  warm  pervasive  religious  spirit  thruout;  these 


382 


Adventures  in  Social  Education 


vesper  services  lent  a  tone  to  the  settlement  which  was  felt  by 
everyone  privileged  to  share  them.  Heterodox,  almost  agnostic, 
tho  I  was,  1  loved  the  Commons  vespers  and  never  missed  them 
unless  some  imperative  call  took  me  away.  Graham  Taylor  was 
the  one  settlement  warden  I  have  known  whose  religion  was  of 
such  a  kind  that  he  did  not  fear  to  obtrude  it. 

The  Chicago  school  had  a  simple  beginning  during  the  winter 
of  1901-’02,  in  the  need,  felt  at  the  Commons  and  at  Hull  House, 
for  trained  settlement  workers.  Jane  Addams,  Julia  Lathrop, 
aud  Graham  Taylor  joined  in  arranging  a  course  of  evening  lec¬ 
tures  on  social  topics,  which  were  held  in  the  board-room  of  the 
Relief  and  Aid  Society’s  building.  The  lectures  became  popular 
and  more  commodious  quarters  had  to  be  found  for  them.  The  lec¬ 
ture  fees  which  it  was  possible  to  charge  could  not  nearly  cover 
expenses,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  lecturers  were  volunteers ; 
and  Graham  Taylor  undertook  to  raise  what  money  was  needed. 
He  had  already  a  heavy  burden  of  money-raising  in  the  needs  of 
the  Commons,  but  to  him  difficulty  means  not  despair,  but 
increased  effort.  Miss  Lathrop  was  always  a  most  faithful  coad¬ 
jutor  and  was  a  member  of  a  board  of  trustees  which  assumed 
responsibility  for  the  work  and  fostered  its  development.  A  few 
socially  minded  and  wealthy  people  became  interested  and  the 
school  prospered.  Instruction  in  one  new  form  of  social  work 
was  taken  up  after  another.  It  was  a  period  of  remarkable  social 
development  in  Chicago.  The  story  of  the  simultaneous  evolution 
of  social  work  and  the  social  instruction  of  the  school  would 
make  a  fascinating  volume. 

My  first  lectures  were  in  1902  while  it  was  still  an  evening 
school,  which  the  University  of  Chicago  was  doing  a  very  little 
to  help.  After  a  few  years  when  larger  quarters  were  secured, 
and  the  school  had  grown  to  a  full-time  all-day  affair  with 
autumn,  winter,  spring,  and  summer  terms,  I  was  called  on  for 
regular  courses  of  lectures  on  such  topics  as  the  history  of  public 
relief,  that  of  organized  charity,  the  administration  of  charitable 
agencies,  and  the  institutional  care  of  dependents,  defectives  and 
delinquents. 

I  began  my  life  as  an  American  citizen  in  Chicago  in  1873, 
and  lived  there  for  six  years,  and  came  again  in  1886  to  be  secre¬ 
tary  of  the  C.  O.  S.  For  me,  as  for  every  one  who  has  ever  had 


The  School  in  Chicago 


383 


his  home  there,  the  great  city,  in  spite  of  its  noise  and  dirt  and 
materialism,  has  always  a  weird  and  permanent  attraction,  Its 
life  may  not  be  highly  refined,  but  it  is  the  livest  place  I  know. 

Graham  Taylor  as  president  always  took  a  good  share  of  the 
duty  of  lecturing.  The  two  chief  features  which,  for  twenty 
years,  marked  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy  off 
from  most  of  the  similar  institutions  of  the  country,  were  the 
inspirational  power  of  the  president’s  lectures  and  the  widely 
inclusive  and  practical  nature  of  the  instruction  given.  Other 
schools  were  more  academic,  its  most  distinguishing  qualities 
were  humanness  and  breadth. 

After  several  years  of  hardly-won  support,  the  burden  on  Mr. 
Taylor’s  shoulders  was  somewhat  lifted  by  the  generosity  of  a 
social-minded  man  of  wealth  who  gave  the  school  the  use  of  a 
mansion  on  Michigan  Ave.  Built  for  a  residence  it  had  a  home¬ 
like  appearance.  No  one  would  have  erected  a  school-house  on 
such  a  plan,  but  its  parlors  which  were  used  for  lecture-rooms 
suited  the  genius  of  the  institution  the  very  building  seemed 
human  to  match  the  president  and  his  faculty.  To  live  at  the 
Commons  and  lecture  at  the  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy 
was  a  source  of  inspiration  and  delight  to  one  like  myself  to 
whom  humanity  is  the  most  sacred  thing  in  the  universe  and  I 
enjoyed  the  privilege  for  many  years,  usually  spending  there  six 
weeks  of  each  winter  and  two  weeks  of  each  summer  term. 


Chapter  Three 


OTHER  SCHOOLS  AND  COLLEGES 

Following  the  example  of  New  York  and  Chicago,  schools  for 
social  workers  were  begun  in  Boston,  St.  Louis,  Philadelphia, 
Houston,  and  other  cities,  and  at  each  of  them,  I  was  given  the 
privilege  of  lecturing  either  giving  short  courses  or  occasional 
lectures. 

For  many  years  of  my  life,  ever  since  the  time  I  became  sec¬ 
retary  of  the  National  Conference,  I  have  had  opportunities  of 
telling  the  gospel  of  social  work  in  many  educational  institutions. 
There  is  a  satisfaction  in  talking  to  audiences  of  students  such  as 
comes  from  no  other  lecturing.  Your  hearers  are  young  and 
impressionable;  they  are  to  be  leaders  in  their  several  communi¬ 
ties.  To  inspire  them  with  right  ideals  is  sowing  seed  which  may 
have  a  wonderful  harvest  in  immensely  wider  fields. 

In  Chicago  for  five  years  consecutively,  I  gave  each  year  a 
course  on  the  care  of  defectives  at  the  Loyola  School  of  Sociology. 
I  had  met  its  director  at  a  State  Conference  of  social  workers  in 
Illinois  and  after  he  heard  me  speak  he  invited  me  to  join  his 
staff  as  an  occasional  lecturer.  The  school  was  held  in  the  eve¬ 
nings.  The  students  were  all  busy  people  fully  occupied  during 
business  hours  mainly  in  public  social  work.  The  main  purpose 
of  the  school,  in  the  mind  of  its  director,  was  that  public  social 
work  should  be  well  done.  Besides  my  course  at  the  school  I 
spoke  several  times  to  larger  audiences  connected  with  it  espe¬ 
cially  on  the  care  and  training  of  the  feeble-minded. 

While  at  the  Commons  on  several  occasions,  Mr.  Taylor  had 
me  speak  to  his  students  in  the  theological  school,  sometimes  an 
occasional  lecture,  but  twice  I  gave  brief  courses.  At  Chicago 
University,  Professor  Henderson  had  me  talk  to  his  students, 
once  giving  a  series  on  Prison  Management,  and  several  times  on 
Care  of  the  Defectives.  At  the  Meadville  Theological  Seminary, 
my  friend,  Mrs.  Spencer,  who  was  professor  of  applied  sociology 

(384) 


Other  Schools  and  Colleges 


385 


there,  had  me  come  several  successive  years  during  the  summer 
term,  for  a  week’s  course  on  public  institutions.  And  I  had 
scores  of  opportunities  in  many  of  the  states  of  the  Union  from 
Maine  to  California,  and  south  to  Texas  for  similar  work;  many 
of  these  were  in  connection  with  my  propaganda  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded. 

For  several  consecutive  years  I  was  called  to  the  Summer 
School  for  Social  Work  at  Blue  Ridge,  N.  C.,  conducted  in  connec¬ 
tion  with  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  training  school  at  Nashville,  Tenn.  This 
was  particularly  agreeable  because  of  its  location  among  the 
North  Carolina  mountains,  the  most  delightful  summer  climate  in 
the  land.  One  July  day  I  left  Fort  Wayne  with  the  thermometer 
at  ninety-five  in  the  shade,  traveled  the  hot,  dusty,  dirty  rail¬ 
road  to  Cincinnati;  got  into  a  pullman  berth  which  felt  like 
an  oven ;  wakened  up  at  Knoxville  to  a  milder  temperature ;  found 
the  weather  agreeable  at  Asheville ;  left  the  train  at  Black  Moun¬ 
tain,  and  when  I  reached  Robert  E.  Lee  Hall,  thoroly  enjoyed  an 
open  fire  of  huge  pine  logs,  blazing  in  the  great  fire-place.  To 
leave  the  torrid  North  for  the  cool  and  balmy  South  was  a  de¬ 
lightful  change. 

At  Blue  Ridge  I  usually  lectured  each  morning  and  twice  or 
thrice  in  the  evenings  of  each  week.  One  lecture  always  in  de¬ 
mand  was  a  talk  on  the  feeble-minded  with  stereopticon,  another 
was  on  prison  reform.  Then  the  afternoons  were  pleasantly  occu¬ 
pied  in  mountain  climbing,  with  always  a  swim  before  breakfast 
in  the  delicious  mountain-spring  water  of  the  pool  on  the  campus. 

The  people  I  met  at  Blue  Ridge  were  mainly  Southerners, 
many  of  whom  were  combining  a  little  social  instruction  with 
an  agreeable  vacation,  and  it  was  necessary  to  make  the  talks  not 
only  instructive  but  interesting.  I  learned  to  know  and  love 
the  qualities  of  the  best  of  the  Southern  people  there,  and  made 
many  lasting  friendships.  The  knowledge  I  gained  of  Southern 
character  was  to  be  valuable  when  I  became  staff  representative 
in  the  Southern  division  of  the  Red  Cross. 

I  had  long  desired  to  try  the  possibility  of  interesting  high- 
school  students  in  the  care  of  the  feeble-minded.  Now  on  that 
subject  there  are  many  things  to  say  which  only  an  audience 
of  mature  people  ready  for,  but  I  believed  it  would  be  possible 
to  give  the  facts  which  are  so  important  to  be  known  to  boys 


386 


Adventures  in  Social  Education 


and  girls  also  in  a  way  to  do  good  and  no  harm.  One  day 
I  was  lecturing  on  the  feeble-minded  in  Painesville,  Ohio,  and 
the  principal  of  the  high-school  invited  me  to  talk  to  his  students. 
I  asked  him  on  what  subject,  and  he  replied  “anything  you 
choose.”  I  said  “dare  you  let  me  talk  to  them  on  eugenics?” 
and  he  said  again,  “anything  you  choose.”  So  with  some  misgiv¬ 
ings,  I  gave  the  talk.  The  students  sat  in  the  large  auditorium, 
boys  on  one  side  and  girls  on  the  other ;  on  the  platform  were  the 
principal,  several  teachers,  a  minister,  a  doctor,  and  the  county 
superintendent  of  schools.  I  began  by  telling  the  boys  and  girls 
of  what  we  have  to  do  for  defectives.  I  described  the  schools  for 
the  blind  in  some  detail.  Then  I  went  on  to  the  deaf,  telling  why 
we  must  give  them  and  the  blind  not  only  academic  in¬ 
struction  but  also  an  education  in  work.  I  explained 
the  language  of  signs,  which  is  the  mother-tongue 
of  the  mutes,  illustrating  it  by  some  humorous,  and  one 
pathetic  example.  Then  I  told  them  of  the  feeble-minded,  ex¬ 
plaining  what  we  mean  by  mental-age,  telling  them  of  the  idiots, 
the  imbeciles,  and  the  morons.  I  explained  heredity  and  how  its 
influences,  when  they  are  evil,  have  often  begun  in  wrong  doing, 
how  large  a  part  vice  has  played  in  human  degeneration.  I  told 
them  that  the  feeble-minded  girl,  who  looks  like  a  young  woman, 
is  really  a  child.  I  told  the  boys  that  I  knew  there  was  not  one 
among  them,  who,  if  he  saw  a  little  girl  in  danger  of  abuse  of  any 
kind  would  not  fight  for  her  no  matter  how  great  the  odds  against 
him.  And  the  boys  all  straightened  up  and  looked  brave  and  de¬ 
termined.  Then  I  told  them  that  we  who  are  strong  must  help 
and  protect  the  weak,  even  tho  they  are  weak  in  mind  only,  that 
there  is  no  more  important  duty  for  men  than  to  do  this.  Then 
I  said,  “boys  and  girls  who  will  occupy  these  seats  you  sit  in 
twenty  or  twenty-five  years  from  today  ?  Who  will  they  be  ?  They 
will  be  your  children,  you  will  be  the  men  and  women  of  Paines¬ 
ville,  the  merchants,  lawyers,  doctors,  home-makers,  the  fathers 
and  mothers.  Will  those  boys  and  girls  be  better  than  you, 
nobler,  stronger,  finer  men  and  women?  or  will  they  be  weaker, 
less  pure,  less  worthy?  It  all  depends  on  you,  on  the  way  you 
live,  your  purity  and  fineness,  and  nobility.  The  future  of  the 
city  and  state,  the  quality  of  the  inhabitants,  depends  on  your 
life  and  your  character  now.’ 


Other  Schools  and  Colleges 


387 


I  was  anxious  to  know  what  effect  my  talk  had  had  on  the 
hearers,  and  a  few  days  later  I  wrote  to  Miss  Dilla,  who  had  ar¬ 
ranged  my  engagement  at  Painesville,  asking  her  to  get  me  some 
expressions  of  opinion,  not  compliments  but  the  rugged  truth.  She 
sent  me  several  words  of  approval  from  those  who  had  been  on 
the  platform,  congratulating  me  that  I  had  succeeded  in  not 
arousing  unpleasant  self-consciousness  in  the  students,  while  giv¬ 
ing  them  vital  facts;  and  also  three  letters  which  I  valued  even 
more  highly.  One  was  from  a  boy  in  the  audience  who  thanked 
me  for  the  talk  and  wished  every  high-school  boy  in  Ohio  could 
hear  it ;  another  from  a  girl  who  also  thanked  me  for  what  I  had 
told  them  and  especially  for  the  way  I  had  told  it;  and  a  third 
from  the  mother  of  a  brother  and  sister  who  had  heard  me  to¬ 
gether  and  discussed  my  talk  at  the  supper  table  that  evening. 
She  thanked  me  for  telling  her  children  things  which  she  knew  she 
ought  to  have  told  them  but  had  not.  Since  that  day  I  have 
never  neglected  an  opportunity  to  talk  to  high-school  audiences 
on  my  favorite  topic,  the  prevention  of  human  degeneration,  and 
such  chances  have  often  come  to  me. 

While  I  have  retired  from  active  social  work  as  a  profes¬ 
sion,  I  still  hope  to  keep  up  the  work  I  delight  in,  of  lecturing 
on  social  topics;  and  present  indications  are  that  I  shall  have 
many  opportunities  to  gratify  my  desire. 


PART  SIX 


FIVE  YEARS  ADVENTURING  IN  PROPAGANDA 


(389) 


FIVE  YEARS  ADVENTURING  IN  PROPAGANDA 


Chapter  One 
THE  TASK 

Once  in  a  while  there  comes  to  a  social  worker  a  vision  of 
something  much  needed  and  possible  to  be  done  in  his  department 
of  human  effort ;  something  which  he  sees  how  to  do  and  which  is 
clear-cut  and  positive.  No  other  good  fortune  that  can  come  to 
a  man  is  so  good  as  to  have  such  a  vision  and  with  it  the  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  give  himself  unreservedly  into  making  it  a  reality. 

Shortly  after  the  Conference  of  1912,  I  was  offered  an  attract¬ 
ive  adventure  and  as  I  have  told  in  a  previous  chapter,  I  was 
in  a  responsive  mood,  I  was  about  due  to  attempt  something  new. 
I  had  reached  a  terminus  or  what  seemed  one ;  at  any  rate  I  was 
uncertain  of  the  next  step;  and  personal  reasons  made  a  new 
departure  advisable. 

For  thirty-one  years  I  had  been  so  fortunate  as  to  have  as 
my  business  in  life,  one  adventurous  social  task  following  anoth¬ 
er  ;  each  one  so  alluring  and  bringing  such  satisfactions  that  if  I 
had  not  needed  to  earn  a  living  I  would  gladly  have  undertaken  it 
as  a  volunteer  without  pay.  And  now  came  an  opportunity  more 
inviting  than  any  which  had  gone  before ;  with  fewer  limitations 
and  hindrances  and  opening  a  wider  field.  I  was  asked  to  be¬ 
come  director  of  the  new  extension  department  of  the  Vineland 
Training  School.  Once  more  I  was  invited  to  become  an  apostle 
instead  of  a  deacon. 

The  department  was  not  like  a  University  extension  which 
carries  higher  education  to  other  students  than  those  who  can 
attend  the  university.  Its  object  was  to  extend  the  theories  and 
practice  of  the  training  of  mental  defectives  into  new  and  wider 
fields  and  among  new  people.  Social  adventures  are  attractive  in 
proportion  to  the  rewards  in  benefit  to  the  social  order  which 
they  offer  and  the  interesting  nature  of  the  work  they  require, 

(391) 


392 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


plus  their  difficulties.  Here  was  one  compelling  enough  from 
every  consideration  for  any  man  no  matter  how  venturesome. 

The  department  of  extension  grew  out  of  a  committee  on  the 
feeble-minded,  for  the  state  of  New  Jersey,  of  which  Edward 
R.  Johnstone  had,  for  some  years,  been  secretary  and  chief  execu¬ 
tive.  This  had  made  a  survey  of  conditions  in  the  state,  and  had 
done  much  to  arouse  public  attention  to  the  needs  of  mental  de¬ 
fectives.  The  success  of  the  Training  School  itself,  and  of  the 
committee  it  fostered,  had  been  widely  advertised  in  many  states ; 
especially  by  the  graduates  of  its  summer  school  for  teachers  of 
defectives,  which  had  been  conducted  annually  for  ten  years  or 
more. 

Altho  the  work  of  the  committee  had  been  chiefly  in  New 
Jersey,  Superintendent  Johnstone  and  Dr.  H.  H.  Goddard,  his 
psychologist,  had  been  called  on  for  many  lectures  in  other  states, 
to  an  extent  that  made  a  serious  drain  on  their  time  and  energy. 
There  was  an  evident  demand  for  a  wide  propaganda  work ;  and 
the  directors  of  the  Training  School  decided  to  carry  on  thru- 
out  the  nation  what  their  superintendent  and  psychologist  had 
begun  in  the  state. 

The  offer  came  to  me  from  E.  R.  Johnstone.  Nearly  twenty 
years  earlier,  I  had  induced  him  to  help  me  train  feeble-minded 
boys  and  girls  in  Indiana.  After  learning  the  method  and  catch¬ 
ing  the  vision  of  its  possibilities  of  good ;  he  had  gone  to  New  Jer¬ 
sey  and  there  had  made  “the  Training  School  for  those  whose 
minds  have  not  developed  normally,”  the  best  known  and  most 
useful  thing  of  its  kind  in  the  country,  if  not  in  the  Vorld.  He 
had  begun  the  propaganda  in  the  state  thru  the  committee  which, 
he  had  fostered,  and  the  decision  of  his  directors,  as  to  the  op¬ 
portunity  of  extending  it  to  the  nation,  was  due  to  his  influ¬ 
ence. 

As  director  I  was  to  live  at  the  Training  School,  so  as  to  keep 
in  fresh  and  vital  contact  with  the  kind  of  folk  for  whom  I  was 
to  labor;  and  to  carry  on  the  work,  first  in  New  Jersey,  where  it 
was  so  well  begun,  and  then  further  afield.  The  conditions  were 
very  congenial,  Vineland  is  a  delightful  place  to  live  in.  During 
my  ten  years  among  the  feeble-minded  of  Indiana,  I  had  become 
convinced  that  their  care  was  one  of  the  most  important  duties 
of  the  state;  I  had  found  as  I  thought  the  right  way  to  do  it 


l 


The  Task 


393 


and  believed  that  if  the  facts  I  knew  could  be  known  to  everybody 
public  opinion  would  soon  compel  the  law-makers  to  attempt  the 
work  everywhere.  I  felt  it  would  not  be  many  years  until  I 
should  reach  the  end  of  my  usefulness  as  a  social  worker  and 
as  every  man’s  last  adventure  must  come  some  time  this  seemed 
to  be  ideal  as  a  final  effort.  I  thought  reasonable  success  in  it 
would  make  a  fitting  climax  to  my  social  endeavors. 

For  many  years,  beginning  in  1884,  the  National  Conference 
had  had  a  standing  committee  on  mental  defectives,  and  each  year 
a  report  had  been  made.  The  sessions  devoted  to  the  subject  were 
among  the  most  interesting  and  were  always  crowded.  The  so¬ 
cial  workers  who  attend  the  Conference  were  fairly  well  in¬ 
formed;  but  they  are  only  a  few  hundred  among  the  nation’s 
millions. 

In  the  minds  of  the  general  public  there  was  a  vague  idea  that 
there  does  exist  a  “problem  of  the  feeble-minded,”  that  there  are 
many  of  them  and  that  something  should  be  done.  But  they  were 
usually  or  frequently  confused  with  the  Insane.  There  was  no 
general  knowledge  of  the  relations  between  feeble-mindedness 
and  poverty  and  crime;  there  was  plentiful  ignorance  of  what 
proper  care  means ;  of  the  possibilities  of  training ;  of  the  colony 
plan  and  how  much  of  benefit  it  might  bring;  of  the  degree  to 
which  thousands  of  imbeciles  and  morons,  otherwise  helpless  or 
dependent,  or  hurtful  to  social  order,  might  be  made  safe,  use¬ 
ful  and  happy;  of  the  methods  of  sterilization  and  segregation. 
There  was  evident  need  of  a  wide  presentation  of  the  facts  the 
results  of  experiment,  in  a  popular,  positive,  objective  way;  not 
merely  as  it  had  been  done  to  social  workers  at  national  and 
state  conferences;  but  to  the  general  public.  The  task  was  to 
force  upon  the  attention  of  the  whole  people  the  facts  we  knew; 
to  convince  them  of  the  validity  of  our  methods  and  of  the  duty 
of  every  state  to  its  feeble-minded;  and  to  induce  each  to  dis¬ 
charge  that  duty  fully. 

Twenty-five  months  after  the  work  of  the  extension  depart¬ 
ment  began,  it  developed  into  the  “Committee  on  Provisions  for 
the  Feeble-Minded.”  Tho  the  committee  would  never  allow  itself 
to  be  called  “national”  it  really  began  as  a  national  body.  The  de¬ 
velopment  took  place  at  a  meeting  in  New  York  at  the  residence 
of  Mrs.  E.  H.  Harriman,  on  December  18th,  1914.  The  people 


H94  Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 

who  made  up  the  committee  believed  that  the  care  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded  is  of  such  supreme  importance  to  the  community;  the 
story  of  their  joys  and  sorrows  is  so  interesting;  the  methods  of 
care  and  training  which  have  been  worked  out  in  sixty  years  are 
socially  and  economically  so  sound ;  that  it  only  needs  that  the 
general  public  be  informed  on  all  those  facts  to  make  certain 
that  the  work  shall  be  attempted  and  carried  to  success  in  every 
state.  On  this  belief  the  conclusion  rested  that  the  committee’s 
task  was  to  make  these  facts  known  to  all  persons  in  authority; 
Governors,  legislators,  and  other  public  officials  and  to  the  whole 
mass  of  the  American  people;  its  function  was  nation-wide  pub¬ 
licity. 

Two  methods  seemed  available,  the  written  word  and  the 
spoken  word.  For  the  written  word  the  newspapers  are  the  best 
vehicle  and  a  great  newspaper  campaign  was  proposed.  But 
about  the  time  it  was  planned  to  begin  a  mental  defective  at 
Sarajevo  fired  a  pistol  shot  that  set  civilization  in  flames;  and 
during  the  rest  of  the  committee’s  active  existence  the  great 
war  filled  the  front  pages  of  the  newspapers  and  dwarfed  all 
other  news  to  insignificance. 

So  the  committee  decided  it  must  rely  on  the  power  of  speech 
aided  by  pictures  and  it  was  evident  that  its  chief  agent  to  the 
public  must  be  one  who  had  that  power;  who  knew  the  subject 
so  intimately  that  the  stories  he  had  to  tell  might  be  based  on 
first-hand  information  and  so  be  appealing  and  convincing;  and 
whose  devotion  to  the  task  amounted  to  a  passion. 

When  the  committee  began  it  was  practically  alone  in  the  na¬ 
tional  field.  Its  only  apparent  competitor  was  the  National  Com¬ 
mittee  on  Mental  Hygiene,  which  had  been  organized  to  promote 
better  care  and  treatment  of  the  Insane.  Not  until  the  Commit¬ 
tee  on  Provision  had  done  much  to  arouse  the  public  did  the 
Committee  on  Mental  Hygiene  pay  much  attention  to  the  subject 
of  defective  mentality;  with  which  it  now  seems  chiefly  con¬ 
cerned  ;  as  opposed  to  diseased  mentality  or  insanity ;  which  was 
its  original  objective. 

As  the  committee  faced  its  nation-wide  task  two  chief  con¬ 
siderations  were  born  in  mind.  The  first  was  the  desirabilitv 

9J 

of  conducting  intensive  campaigns  in  certain  states  where  no 
work  for  the  feeble-minded  was  being  done  or  where  it  was  inade- 


The  Task 


395 


quate;  but  in  which  there  were  local  agencies  of  some  sort  al¬ 
ready  active  or  ready  for  action  with  whom  we  might  co-oper¬ 
ate;  in  some  of  these  surveys  might  be  made  which  would  con¬ 
vince  the  citizens  that  the  facts  demonstrated  in  other  states 
existed  equally  in  theirs;  in  these  tangible  results  might  reason¬ 
ably  be  expected.  The  second  consideration  was  the  urgent  need 
of  popular  education  on  the  subject  all  over  the  Union  wherever 
a  hearing  could  be  secured;  especially  where  no  beginning  of 
care  of  the  feeble-minded  had  been  made  and  where  no  popular 
attention  had  been  directed  to  the  problem. 

The  experience  gained  by  the  department  of  extension  in 
New  Jersey  was  a  valuable  guide  to  the  wider  work  thruout  the 
Nation.  Both  intensive  and  extensive  plans  were  adopted.  Witlg 
a  modest  staff  of  an  executive  secretary,  a  field  secretary,  two 
clerks  and  two  field  agents,  a  very  remarkable  work  was  carried 
out.  The  results  have  abundantly  justified  the  methods.  It  is  as¬ 
serted  with  little  fear  of  contradiction  that  no  national  effort  of 
the  kind  has  been  so  successful  in  comparison  with  the  amount 
of  money  expended  and  in  anything  like  the  time  of  its  operation. 


Chapter  Two 


THE  EXECUTION 

The  department  of  extension  began  in  New  Jersey  with  one 
clerk  on  full  time,  a  field  agent  on  part  time  and  myself  as  direc¬ 
tor  in  February,  1913,  altho  until  the  following  May  I  had  to  give 
a  good  deal  of  attention  to  the  National  Conference.  In  the 
course  of  the  next  three  years  I  had  visited  all  the  cities  and 
towns  in  the  state.  I  had  given  one  hundred  and  eleven  lec¬ 
tures  most  of  them  with  sterescopic  illustrations  in  eighty  dif¬ 
ferent  centers,  to  an  estimated  total  audience  of  nearly  20,000 
people.  I  had  traveled  also  as  far  north  as  Montreal,  as  far  east 
as  Newfoundland ;  south  to  New  Orleans  and  Texas ;  west  to  Hli- 
nois,  and  had  given  three  hundred  talks  in  some  two  hundred 
and  fifty  places  outside  of  New  Jersey. 

Altho  from  the  first  we  had  seen  the  work  as  a  Nation-wide 
one,  not  until  the  department  broadened  out  to  a  National  Com¬ 
mittee  did  we  plan  so  widely.  At  the  first  meeting,  Dr.  Green- 
man,  Head  of  the  Wistar  Institute  of  Anatomy,  Philadelphia, 
was  elected  chairman;  Bayard  Cutting  of  New  York  was  made 
treasurer  and  as  he  had  a  wide  acquaintance  among  a  group  of 
enlightened  and  wealthy  people  he  undertook  the  task  of  money 
raising;  E.  R.  Johnstone  continued  as  secretary.  These  three 
principal  officers  were  members  of  the  board  of  the  Vineland 
Training  School.  Then  Joseph  Byers,  who  had  been  Commis¬ 
sioner  of  Charities  of  New  Jersey,  was  elected  executive  secre¬ 
tary  and  my  title  was  changed  from  director  to  field  secretary, 
which  meant  general  publicity  man.  The  office  was  moved  from 
Vineland  to  Philadelphia.  Adding  to  the  staff  of  the  extension 
department  we  got  another  clerk  and  two  more  field  agents,  the 
latter  being  employed  in  making  surveys  in  various  states  and 
preparing  the  way  for  my  lectures.  The  work  in  New  Jersey  was 
not  finished  but  lasted  intermittently  for  about  three  years. 


(396) 


The  Execution 


After  five  years’  and  four  months’  work,  counting  from 
the  inception  of  the  department  of  extension,  or  three  years  and 
six  months  from  the  formation  of  the  Committee  on  Provision, 
we  can  summarize  what  has  been  done. 

Meetings  were  held  and  lectures  given  in  thirty-three  states, 
the  district  of  Columbia,  the  Dominion  of  Canada,  and  New¬ 
foundland.  Three  hundred  and  fifty  different  cities  and  towns 
have  been  the  scenes  of  these  meetings,  some  only  once,  some  of 
them  several  times.  More  than  eleven  hundred  lectures  and  ad¬ 
dresses  were  given  to  an  estimated  cumulative  audience  of  250,- 
000  people. 

The  audiences  have  included  general  public  meetings;  legisla¬ 
tive  assemblies  and  committees ;  state  universities ;  colleges,  med¬ 
ical  schools,  theological  seminaries,  state  normal  schools,  summer 
schools  of  teachers,  high  schools,  teachers’  institutes,  parent- 
teachers’  associations;  church  congregations  at  Sunday  services 
and  prayer  meetings,  ministers’  meetings,  Sunday  schools,  and 
Bible  classes;  schools  of  social  work  in  seven  different  cities; 
chambers  of  commerce,  business  men’s  association’s;  Rotary, 
Kiwanis,  Lions,  and  other  lunch  clubs;  women’s  clubs,  local, 
state,  and  national,  and  national  councils  of  women;  national 
and  state  conferences  of  charities,  conferences  of  health  officers, 
and  of  county  officials,  and  conferences  on  mental  hygiene;  so¬ 
cial  workers’  clubs,  immigrants’  national  associations;  juvenile 
protective  associations;  civic  leagues;  settlements;  state  meet¬ 
ings  of  King’s  Daughters;  eugenics  education  meetings;  audi¬ 
ences  in  moving  picture  shows ;  and  others ;  anywhere  and  every¬ 
where  that  people  had  gathered  with  a  serious  purpose,  and  in 
some  to  which  they  had  come  to  be  amused ;  wherever  a  hearing 
could  be  had;  the  appeal  of  the  feeble-minded  was  made. 

Of  the  eleven  hundred  and  more  lectures  and  addresses  about 
half  were  illustrated  by  stereoscopic  views,  showing  the  audi¬ 
ences  what  the  children  whose  histories  were  being  told  looked 
like  as  they  worked  and  played  and  learned. 

Co-Operating  Agencies 

While  the  work  of  the  Committee  was  the  chief  factor  in  se¬ 
curing  the  results  to  be  related,  there  were  many  valuable  co¬ 
operating  agencies.  The  National  Committee  on  Mental  Hygiene 


398 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


did  much  good  work  after  it  entered  the  field;  in  several  states 
we  worked  with  it.  Some  of  the  State  Boards  of  Charities  took 
part  arranging  for  surveys  and  otherwise  helping  tho  some  of 
these  boards  were  conspicuous  by  their  inattention.  Several 
states  had  commissions  on  the  feeble-minded,  some  under  legisla¬ 
tive  authorization,  some  of  voluntary  organization,  and  these  in 
all  cases  called  on  the  Committee  for  help.  The  creation  of  some 
of  these  commissions  was  due  to  our  activity. 

Women's  Clubs 

The  assistance  of  these  bodies  of  intelligent  public-spirited 
women  was  of  inestimable  value  to  the  committee.  While  I  had 
often  found  it  difficult  to  arouse  the  interest  of  bodies  of  men,  es¬ 
pecially  of  politicians  in  the  needs  of  the  feeble-minded;  the 
cause  of  the  mentally  defective  girl,  so  weak  a  victim,  so  cer¬ 
tainly  a  source  of  evil  thru  her  weakness  if  not  protected ;  when 
I  have  placed  it  properly  before  a  group  of  women  has  never 
failed  to  arouse  their  sympathy  or  their  indignation  leading  to 
their  desire  to  give  active  help. 

In  several  of  the  states  in  which  the  more  intensive  campaigns 
were  carried  on,  notably  in  Arkansas,  California,  Kentucky,  and 
Wisconsin,  the  state  federation  of  women's  clubs  arranged  my 
itinerary  in  whole  or  part;  the  local  clubs  working  up  the  audi¬ 
ences  and  often  defraying  the  expenses.  One  of  the  reasons  why 
we  did  so  much  with  so  small  a  financial  outlay  was  that  we  often 
got  both  financial  and  social  co-operation. 

When  I  was  invited  by  the  Canadian  National  Council  of 
Women  to  deliver  an  illustrated  lecture  in  Montreal,  the  Coun¬ 
cil  not  only  paid  expenses  but  also  a  substantial  honorarium.  The 
policy  of  the  committee  was  to  collect  expenses  when  possible 
and  to  accept  a  lecture  fee  when  it  was  offered.  In  all  cases  such 
fees  accrued  to  the  committee  not  to  the  lecturer  personally; 
But  no  opportunity  to  advance  the  cause  was  neglected  for  finan¬ 
cial  reasons. 

/ 

Universities  and  Colleges 

One  of  the  best  fields  for  the  work  of  educational  publicity  of 
any  important  social  reform  is  found  in  the  institutions  of  higher 
education.  While  results  of  lectures  given  there  might  net  be 


The  Execution 


399 


immediate  I  felt  they  would  probably  be  permanent  and  far 
reaching.  Accordingly  I  made  efforts  to  reach  universities,  col¬ 
leges,  theological  seminaries,  normal  schools,  medical  schools, 
summer  schools  for  teachers  and  high  schools.  Illustrated  lec¬ 
tures  on  the  feeble-minded,  as  well  as  courses  of  lectures  on  social 
topics,  in  which  the  care  of  the  feeble-minded  and  the  extent  to 
which  the  feeble-minded  complicated  all  other  social  problems 
were  made  clear,  were  given. 

During  the  committee’s  life  I  lectured  ninety-five  times  to 
such  audiences  as  are  mentioned  above  in  seventy-two  different 
cities  and  twenty-eight  different  states;  the  estimated  total  num¬ 
ber  of  students  addressed  having  been  fully  twenty  thousand. 

The  Southern  States 

A  large  part  of  my  work  was  done  in  the  South.  The  spe¬ 
cial  interest  in  the  feeble-minded  in  that  part  of  the  Union  began 
with  the  first  meeting  of  the  Southern  Sociological  Congress, 
held  at  Nashville,  Tenn.,  in  1912,  nearly  a  year  before  the  de¬ 
partment  of  extension  was  in  operation.  At  that  meeting  two 
addresses  were  made,  one  by  H.  H.  Hart,  of  the  Russell  Sage 
Foundation,  on  “The  Feeble-Minded  Girl,”  and  another  by  my¬ 
self;  (I  was  then  Secretary  of  the  National  Conference  of  Chari¬ 
ties  and  Correction )y  on  “The  Menace  of  the  Feeble-Minded.” 
These  addresses  aroused  the  attention  of  some  public-spirited 
men  and  women  and  led  to  important  developments. 

At  that  time  the  only  active  public  institutions  in  the  South 
for  the  feeble-minded  were  in  the  states  of  Maryland,  Missouri, 
Oklahoma,  and  Kentucky.  North  Carolina  had  begun  to  build 
an  institution  but  had  no  pupils  in  the  school.  A  small  begin¬ 
ning  was  made  in  Texas  about  that  time  after  some  lectures  I  had 
given  which  were  promoted  by  a  professor  of  sociology  of  the  state 
university ;  and  a  cottage  for  feeble-minded  females  was  added  to 
the  state  colony  for  epileptics  in  Virginia,  partly  as  a  result  of 
my  work  in  that  state. 

In  most  of  the  Southern  states  the  topic  was  a  new  one.  The 
opportunity  for  education  was  wide.  I  had  presented  the  sub¬ 
ject  at  state  conferences  in  Florida  and  Mississippi  in  1911  and 
1912,  and  had  given  lectures  in  1912  at  summer  schools  at  Blue 
Ridge,  N.  C.,  at  Meadville,  Pa.,  and  in  Chicago ;  at  each  of  which 


400 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


there  were  students  from  the  South.  All  these  efforts,  tho 
scattering,  were  helpful  in  advance  of  the  work  of  the  Commit¬ 
tee  on  Provision. 

By  the  time  set  for  the  second  Southern  Sociological  Con¬ 
gress,  which  met  in  Atlanta  in  1913,  the  extension  department 
was  organized  and  I  gave  an  illustrated  lecture  at  the  congress 
to  a  large  and  representative  audience  of  Southern  people. 
From  that  time  the  campaign  in  the  Southern  states  for  the 
care  of  the  feeble-minded  may  be  said  to  have  fairly  begun. 

It  would  be  tiresome  to  give  the  particulars  of  my  work  in 
every  state.  What  happened  in  a  few  typical  ones  will  practic¬ 
ally  tell  the  story  for  the  rest. 

Arkansas 

When  the  “Men  and  Religion  Forward  Movement”  swept 
over  the  country  a  few  years  ago,  the  city  of  Little  Rock  was  vis¬ 
ited  and  the  usual  local  committees  were  formed  to  carry  for¬ 
ward  the  work  which  the  apostles  of  the  “movement”  had  begun. 
One  of  these  committees  was  on  social  service  and  the  local  chair¬ 
man  was  a  liberal  minded  lawyer,  Mr.  Durant  Whipple.  He  told 
me  that  when  he  accepted  the  chairmanship  he  did  not  know  what 
“social  service”  was,  but  he  soon  discovered  it. 

The  committee  organized  a  “United  Charities  Society”  and  en¬ 
gaged  a  trained  social  worker  as  secretary.  The  new  society  soon 
found  among  its  clients  in  distress  many  cases  in  which  the 
trouble  was  caused  or  made  more  acute  by  feeble  mindedness. 
This  was  a  new  idea  to  the  directors  who  began  to  ask  “what  is 
feeble-mindness ?”  and  “what  should  be  done  about  it?”  The 
secretary,  Mr.  Auerbach,  advised  them  to  send  for  me  to  tell 
them  my  story.  This  was  before  the  department  of  extension  be¬ 
gan,  while  I  was  still  secretary  of  the  National  Conference. 

In  response  to  an  invitation  from  the  society  I  went  to  Little 
Rock  and  lectured  to  a  small  but  very  influential  audience.  This 
was  in  1912.  A  few  months  later  I  was  requested  to  attend  a 
state  conference  of  charities  at  Fort  Smith,  Ark.,  the  subject  as¬ 
signed  to  me  being  “Segregation  and  Sterilization.”  Being  un¬ 
able  to  attend  I  was  asked  to  write  a  paper  to  be  read  at  the 
meeting.  This  was  published  in  a  report  of  the  conference; 
printed  in  full  in  the  Arkansas  Gazette,  which  is  the  leading 


The  Execution 


401 


paper  of  the  state;  and  reprinted  in  twenty -one  local  papers. 
As  a  result  of  my  first  lecture  a  state  commission  had  been  ap¬ 
pointed  by  the  Governor,  of  which  Mr.  Whipple  had  been  made 
secretary,  but  it  had  no  funds  and  it  needed  help.  When  the  Na¬ 
tional  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction  (now  of  Social 
Work)  met  in  Memphis  in  1914,  Mr.  Whipple  came  there  specially 
to  find  what  the  Committee  on  Provision  (or  the  department  of 
extension,  as  it  then  was)  could  do  for  Arkansas.  The  result 
was  a  meeting  in  Little  Rock  with  the  State  Commission  of  repre¬ 
sentatives  of  the  National  Committee  on  Mental  Hygiene,  the 
Committee  on  Provision  for  the  Feeble-Minded,  and  the  U.  S.  De¬ 
partment  of  Health.  These  bodies  each  agreed  to  help  the  cam¬ 
paign.  The  U.  S.  Health  Department  made  mental  tests  of  a 
few  children  in  representative  schools;  the  Committee  on  Mental 
Hygiene  examined  some  of  the  inmates  in  the  state  penitentiary 
and  the  boys’  reform  school ;  also  the  Eugenics  Record  office  sent 
an  agent  who  traced  the  heredity  of  a  few  feeble-minded  families ; 
and  I  went  as  propagandist  and  publicity  man. 

For  two  months  in  1914  and  six  weeks  in  1915,  I  traveled 
thru  the  state  speaking  in  each  important  city  and  town.  In 
all  I  lectured  eighty  times  in  fifty-seven  different  towns  and  cit¬ 
ies.  In  January,  1916,  during  the  meeting  of  the  legislature  I 
gave  an  illustrated  lecture  to  a  joint  session  of  the  House  and 
Senate  at  which  the  Governor  presided  and  introduced  me.  The 
week  following  a  bill  was  introduced  to  create  a  state  school 
and  colony;  it  was  passed  and  signed  by  the  Governor. 

Florida 

In  this  state  I  had  started  things  going  with  a  lecture  at  a 
state  conference  of  charities  at  Tampa  in  December,  1912,  fol¬ 
lowed  by  another  in  February,  1914,  at  Gainesville.  The  Chil¬ 
dren’s  Home  and  Aid  Society  and  the  Federation  of  Women’s 
Clubs  took  up  the  agitation  and  got  a  state  commission  appoint¬ 
ed.  The  State  Hospital  for  Insane  at  Chattahoochee  was  very 
badly  overcrowded;  among  the  inmates  there  were  more  than 
four  hundred  imbeciles  and  idiots  who  were  occupying  beds  bad¬ 
ly  needed  for  insane,  who  could  not  be  admitted  for  want  of 
room.  The  legislature  was  contemplating  the  creation  of  a  new 
hospital.  I  was  invited  to  lecture  to  the  legislature  and  advised 


402 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


them  to  establish  a  state  colony  and  school  for  feeble-minded  and 
begin  it  with  those  now  in  the  hospital  for  insane;  so  relieving 
the  crowding  there.  This  was  accepted  as  the  wise  thing  to  do 
and  the  week  after  my  lecture  a  bill  for  a  colony  farm,  with  a 
school  to  be  added  later,  became  law. 

Louisiana 

Here  the  interest  began  with  the  Sociological  Congress  in 
1912.  This  was  attended  by  Miss  Jean  M.  Gordon,  a  very  public 
spirited  and  influential  woman.  She  was  particularly  impressed 
by  Dr.  Hart’s  plea  for  the  feeble-minded  girl  and  resolved  that 
Louisiana  should  do  its  part  for  the  mental  defectives. 

The  State  Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs  was  interested  and 
several  influential  bodies  in  New  Orleans  joined  with  them.  In 
the  course  of  the  next  few  years,  I  gave  nineteen  lectures  and  ad¬ 
dresses  in  New  Orleans  to  a  great  variety  of  audiences,  including 
Tulane  Medical  School,  Newcomb  College,  the  New  Era  Club,  the 
Catholic  Women’s  Club,  the  Equal  suffrage  Association;  the  an¬ 
nual  conference  of  the  National  Child-labor  Society  which  met 
that  year  in  New  Orleans,  and  others.  The  executive  secretary  of 
the  Committee  on  Provision  was  invited  to  address  the  legisla¬ 
ture  and  other  efforts  were  made,  including  some  work  by  the 
National  Committee  on  Mental  Hygiene.  What  followed  is  told 
in  the  chapter  on  “results.” 

Kentucky 

* 

This  state  was  the  fifth  in  the  Union  to  have  a  state  institu¬ 
tion  for  the  feebleminded ;  but  owing  to  a  vicious  law  which  pro¬ 
vided  for  a  state  pension  to  be  paid  to  a  “committee”  for  the  bene¬ 
fit  of  each  “indigent  imbecile”;  a  law  whose  effect  has  been  de¬ 
clared  to  be  to  promote  the  propagation  of  idiots  and  imbeciles; 
the  institution  had  never  been  adequately  supported;  and  be¬ 
cause  that  law  really  had  the  effect  of  increasing  the  amount  of 
defectiveness,  the  number  and  condition  of  the  feeble-minded; 
in  spite  of  the  state  school ;  was  worse  than  in  some  states  having 
no  provision  for  the  class. 

Before  the  work  could  possibly  be  as  it  should  it  was  neces¬ 
sary  to  secure  the  repeal  of  this  law  which  had  often  been  at¬ 
tacked  but  which  was  the  source  of  so  much  petty  graft  that  it 


The  Execution 


403 


had  survived  all  the  assaults  of  those  who  sought  to  get  rid  of 
it.  A  small  group  of  people  in  Louisville  active  in  social  wel¬ 
fare,  secured  the  appointment  by  the  Governor  of  a  commission 
on  the  feeble-minded,  of  which  Mr.  E.  S.  Tachau,  was  chair¬ 
man.  This  commission  invited  the  assistance  of  the  Committee 
on  Provision  and  also  that  of  the  National  Committee  on  Mental 
Hygiene.  The  latter  sent  a  field  agent  into  the  state  to  make 
a  survey  of  the  conditions ;  and  I  went  to  Kentucky  with  my  pic¬ 
ture  show. 

I  conducted  two  brief  publicity  campaigns;  the  first  began  at 
a  state  conference  of  charities  in  Lexington  in  November,  1915, 
and  included  fifteen  cities  and  towns;  the  second  began  in  Octo¬ 
ber,  1917,  and  practically  covered  the  important  towns  of  the 
state.  For  each  of  the  campaigns  the  women’s  clubs  acted  as  ad¬ 
vance  agents,  securing  places  of  meetings  and  publicity  and 
many  of  them  paid  traveling  expenses,  the  rest  being  defrayed 
by  the  state  commission.  The  two  itineraries  included  eighty- 
one  lectures  given  in  thirty-nine  different  towns.  Fourteen  of 
the  lectures  Were  given  in  the  city  of  Louisville. 

One  of  my  talks  in  Louisville  was  at  a  dinner  given  by  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  at  which  I  was  the  guest  of  honor.  I 
began  my  speech  by  telling  them  that  when  Kentucky  county, 
of  the  state  of  Virginia,  became  the  state  of  Kentucky,  one  of  the 
early  laws  enacted  by  the  legislature  was  to  promote  the  breeding 
of  horses  and  thanks  to  that  law  and  their  unequalled  blue-grass 
pastures,  Kentucky  has  always  had  the  best  trotting  horses  in 
the  country.  This  brought  a  round  of  applause.  Then  I  told 
them  that  a  few  years  later  another  law  was  enacted,  whose 
effect  was  to  encourage  the  breeding  of  idiots  and  imbeciles  and 
it  had  been  equally  successful;  and  they  did  not  applaud  me  at 
all,  but  they  listened  intently.  I  explained  the  law  and  how  it 
had  been  made  a  source  of  petty  graft  by  officials  and  others.  I 
told  them  of  a  county  clerk  who  was  the  Committee”  for  twenty 
imbeciles,  whom  he  boarded  out  at  an  average  rate  of  less  than 
half  the  amount  of  the  pension,  many  of  them  being  able  to 
work  for  the  farmers  with  whom  they  were  boarded  so  that  he 
got  a  substantial  rake-off;  of  a  farmer  reputed  prosperous  by  his 
neighbors  because  “he  had  ten  idiot  kids ?’  of  a  family  of  idiot 
children  being  brought  into  court  hauled  in  a  crate  to  be  re-com- 


404 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


mitted  each  five  years,  each  time  their  number  increasing  by  one 
or  two ;  of  one  county  where  the  county  judge  had  told  me  there 
had  been  no  one  committed  as  insane  to  the  state  hospital,  where 
they  might  have  had  at  least  a  chance  to  be  cured  during  ten 
years  past;  but  each  had  been  declared  “imbecile”  so  that  they 
might  stay  at  home  in  misery,  and  those  who  had  charge  of 
them  receive  the  state  pension;  of  the  fact  that  altho  Kentucky 
was  the  fifth  state  to  have  a  state  school  for  the  feeble-minded,  it 
was  one  of  the  poorest  and  most  poorly  conducted,  because  this 
vicious  pension  law  stood  in  the  way  of  the  legislature  making 
reasonable  appropriations  for  the  school.  When  I  had  told  them 
what  can  and  should  be  done  and  is  being  done  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded  ;  and  especially  how  their  propagation  which  the  pension 
law  encouraged  ought  to  be  stopped;  they  gave  me  a  vote  of 
thanks  and  lined  up  with  the  commission  in  favor  of  the  reform. 

Wherever  I  went  thru  Kentucky  and  told  my  stories  my  audi¬ 
ences  were  convinced,  and  my  stock  of  incidents  of  the  results 
of  the  pension  law  was  augmented  by  people  who  gave  me  in¬ 
stances  of  the  gross  abuse  of  and  disastrous  consequences  from, 
that  law,  which  was  my  chief  point  of  attack.  I  only  found 
one  man  to  defend  the  pension  system ;  he  was  a  state  senator 
and  was  the  committee  for  three  imbecile  children  whom  he  de¬ 
clared  were  very  well  cared  for. 

My  campaigns  culminated  in  three  days  spent  with  the  legis¬ 
lature  at  Frankfort  in  February,  1918.  I  appeared  before  com¬ 
mittees  of  the  House  and  Senate  and  interviewed  many  of  the 
members  in  the  interest  of  a  bill  which  I  had  helped  to  draft 
which  repealed  the  pension  law  and  provided  for  a  large  extension 
of  the  state  school  and  which  was  successful.  Recent  changes  in 
the  state’s  way  of  managing  her  institutions  make  the  pros¬ 
pect  for  effective  care  very  hopeful. 

South  Carolina 

The  interest  in  this  state  began  when  a  Board  of  State  Chari¬ 
ties  was  created  with  an  active  intelligent  liberal  minded  secre¬ 
tary,  Albert  Sydney  Johnstone.  Knowing  of  my  work  in  organiz¬ 
ing  the  Board  of  State  Charities  of  Indiana,  he  came  to  Vineland 
in  the  summer  of  1915,  to  consult  me  about  his  state  board  work 


The  Execution 


405 


and  was  naturally  much  interested  in  what  we  showed  him  of 
the  training  of  the  feeble-minded  which  was  quite  new  to  him. 

In  September  of  the  same  year  a  state  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Public  Welfare  was  held  in  Columbia,  S.  C.  to  which  I  was 
invited.  This  conference  was  largely  attended,  Governor  Man¬ 
ning  came  to  many  of  its  sessions,  Mrs.  Manning,  his  wife,  was 
at  every  one  of  them.  My  lecture  on  the  care  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded  with  stereoscopic  illustrations  was  the  feature  of  an 
evening  session.  The  whole  conference  was  converted.  At  the 
close  of  the  address  the  Governor  with  the  speaker  of  the  House 
of  Representatives,  invited  me  to  repeat  the  lecture  to  a  joint 
session  of  the  two  houses,  when  the  legislature  should  convene  in 
January  1916,  and  the  next  morning,  the  president  of  the  Senate 
joined  in  the  invitation. 

Following  the  state  conference,  I  lectured  in  a  few  of  the 
principal  cities.  The  next  step  was  the  making  of  a  survey  of 
feeble-mindedness  in  South  Carolina,  which  was  done  by  Miss 
Helen  Hill,  a  field  agent  of  the  Committee  on  Provision,  work¬ 
ing  under  the  direction  of  the  state  Board  of  Charities  who  paid 
the  expense  of  the  survey.  In  January  1916,  I  gave  my  lecture 
and  showed  my  pictures  at  a  joint  session  of  the  two  houses  of 
the  legislature  and  got  much  applause.  The  law  makers  had  been 
enacting  some  temperance  legislation  and  were  much  worked  up 
about  the  evils  of  alcoholism  and  when  I  traced  the  beginnings 
of  some  feeble-minded  family  lines  to  drunkenness  and  debauch¬ 
ery  I  made  warm  friends  for  the  cause.  A  bill  was  introduced 
to  create  a  school  and  colony  and  passed  the  House  but  was  lost 
in  the  Senate  in  the  rush  of  business  at  the  end  of  the  session. 
The  State  Board  of  Charities,  warmly  supported  by  Gov.  Man¬ 
ning,  kept  the  subject  before  the  people  and  it  was  a  major  topic 
at  a  state  conference  in  Charleston  in  November  1916. 

At  this  second  conference.  Bishop  Gerry  of  South  Carolina 
was  in  the  chair  and  he  introduced  me  to  the  audience  in  one 
of  those  mildly  humorous  speeches  which  are  so  frequently  heard 
when  the  topic  is  the  feeble-minded.  When  I  concluded  the  good 
Bishop  sprang  to  his  feet  and  most  warmly  endorsed  what  I  had 
said.  He  declared  that  until  he  heard  my  story  he  had  no  con¬ 
ception  of  the  gravity  of  the  situation;  that  my  lecture  had 
informed  and  completely  converted  him;  he  pledged  his  utmost 


406 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


efforts  and  the  use  of  all  the  influence  he  possessed  to,  as  he  said, 
“make  the  state  of  South  Carolina  do  exactly  what  this  gentle¬ 
man  has  told  us  ought  to  be  done  for  the  feeble-minded”.  While 
Bishop  Gerry  was  speaking,  a  dear  white-haired  old  lady  sitting 
behind  me,  touched  me  on  the  shoulder  and  passed  me  a  slip  of 
paper  on  which  she  had  written  “Fm  glad  God  made  you”.  When 
the  legislature  met  in  January  1917,  I  lectured  again  to  the  two 
houses  in  joint  session.  The  bill  which  had  passed  the  House 
a  year  before  was  approved  by  the  Senate  and  the  institution  is 
now  in  successful  operation. 

Virginia 

In  this  state  the  interest  had  begun  with  the  meeting  of  the 
National  Conference  of  Charities  in  Richmond  in  1908.  E.  R. 
Johnstone  was  chairman  of  the  committee  on  mental  defectives 
that  year  and  the  subject  was  well  presented.  The  state  had 
just  created  a  Board  of  State  Charities  with  Dr.  J.  T.  Mastin  as 
its  secretary,  and  his  visits  of  inspection  to  poorhouses,  reform 
schools  and  jails,  soon  disclosed  the  vast  mass  of  poverty,  crime 
and  other  social  evils,  attributable  to  feeble-mindedness.  From 
its  first  year  the  board  began  holding  state  conferences  of  chari¬ 
ties  and  to  these  Dr.  Mastin  always  invited  me  to  present  the 
case  of  the  feeble-minded. 

In  1913,  I  made  a  ten  days  tour  in  the  eastern  part  of  the 
state  under  Dr.  Mastin’s  direction  and  gave  sixteen  lectures  in 
as  many  cities.  I  made  other  journeys  to  the  central  and  west¬ 
ern  counties  in  1916,  1917,  and  1918.  During  these  visits,  I  went 
to  twenty-eight  cities  and  lectured  to  forty  audiences. 

Other  Southern  States 

In  Georgia,  the  effect  of  the  lectures  at  the  Southern  Socio¬ 
logical  Congress  was  marked.  A  state  commission  was  formed 
and  on  its  invitation  I  gave  a  few  lectures  mostly  in  Atlanta, 
with  good  results. 

In  Mississippi  I  had  got  the  interest  started  at  a  state  con¬ 
ference  of  Charities  in  1912,  when  I  gave  two  lectures  one  of 
them  illustrated ;  which  aroused  the  attention  of  some  physi¬ 
cians  and  some  members  of  the  Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs. 
Some  of  these  people  came  to  the  Sociological  Congress  at 


The  Execution 


407 


Atlanta  and  the  National  Conference  at  Memphis  and  I  lec¬ 
tured  to  the  state  meeting  of  the  King’s  Daughters  at  Natchez 
in  May  1914. 

Missouri  had  an  institution  for  imbeciles  and  epileptics,  but 
its  accommodations  had  long  been  recognized  as  inadequate. 
A  group  of  social  workers  in  St.  Louis  and  Kansas  City  began 
an  effort  to  increase  the  provision  and  called  on  me  for  help.  I 
lectured  in  a  few  of  the  larger  cities  and  at  their  state  confer¬ 
ence.  In  February  1915,  I  went  to  Jefferson  City  while  the  legis¬ 
lature  was  in  session  and  addressed  a  large  audience  which 
included  about  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  members  of  the 
House  and  Senate.  The  following  week  an  appropriation  for 
extension  of  the  institution  was  trebled  and  the  social  workers 
declared  that  the  increase  was  the  direct  result  of  my  lecture. 

North  Carolina  was  one  of  the  few  Southern  states  which, 
before  1913,  had  recognized  the  duty  of  caring  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded;  but  altho  the  school  was  built,  it  was  not  equipped  for 
pupils.  At  the  urgency  of  the  promoters  of  the  institution,  I 
attended  state  conferences,  and  other  meetings  and  gave  thirty- 
nine  lectures.  A  good  many  of  these  were  at  the  summer  school 
for  social  workers,  held  annually  at  Blue  Ridge,  which  attracts 
people  from  many  Southern  states,  and  is  a  favorable  place  for 
that  general  publicity  Which  our  committee  was  organized  to 
give. 

In  Tennessee,  as  in  Virginia,  Florida,  and  Mississippi,  I  had 
begun  the  propaganda  before  the  committee  was  organized.  Here 
the  idea  of  teaching  the  feeble-minded  was  not  quite  so  new  as 
in  most  of  the  South  as  there  had  been  a  small  private  school  in 
existence  for  ten  or  twelve  years.  Public  interest  however  began 
at  a  state  conference  in  19li,  at  Chattanooga,  where  my  lectures 
caught  people’s  attention  which  was  much  increased  by  the 
Sociological  Congress  in  Nashville  the  next  year.  Since  then 
several  important  meetings  had  kept  the  interest  growing.  The 
National  Conference  at  Memphis  in  1914,  a  second  state  confer¬ 
ence  at  Chattanooga  in  1916,  another  at  Memphis  in  1918,  all 
had  their  effect.  At  each  of  these  meetings  the  promoters,  espe¬ 
cially  Mr.  Menzler,  secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities, 
featured  my  lectures  and  they  kept  the  matter  before  the  public 
and  the  legislature. 


408 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


States  Outside  the  South 

A  small  group  of  socially  minded  people  in  Denver,  who  were 
dissatisfied  with  the  slow  progress  of  the  Colorado  institution, 
called  on  us  for  help.  I  gave  eighteen  lectures  for  them;  in 
Denver ;  at  the  state  University  in  Boulder ;  the  Teachers  College 
at  Greely ;  and  the  University  at  Colorado  Springs. 

California  had  begun  an  institution  in  1889,  about  the  time 
of  the  meeting  of  the  National  Conference  at  San  Francisco. 
Here  we  worked  with  the  Board  of  State  Charities,  and  the  Fed¬ 
eration  of  Women’s  Clubs  toward  getting  a  much  needed  second 
institution  for  the  Southern  part  of  the  state.  In  all  I  lectured 
fifteen  times  in  nine  different  cities.  One  lecture  was  given  at 
Del  Monte  at  the  meeting  of  the  Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs 
on  which  occasion  I  was  much  impressed  by  the  ability,  knowl¬ 
edge  and  public  spirit  of  the  club  women  of  the  state;  no  doubt 
partly  due  to  the  effects  of  the  franchise  in  developing  their 
sense  of  responsibility. 

Connecticut  is  the  birth  place  of  the  National  Committee  on 
Mental  Hygiene.  My  work  here  was  confined  to  attending  and 
speaking  at  state  conferences  in  1914  and  1915;  speaking  with 
stereopticon  at  a  public  meeting  called  by  the  Mental  Hygiene 
people  at  Hartford  and  also  at  a  legislative  hearing  about  some 
extension  of  the  state  institution  which  had  long  had  a  rather 
feeble  existence. 

Illinois  was  the  fourth  state  in  the  Union  to  create  a  state 
institution  for  the  feeble-minded  but  as  in  every  other  state  the 
accommodations  have  never  been  equal  to  the  need.  Owing  to 
frequent  requests  from  various  bodies  of  people,  and  the  fact 
that  I  spent  at  least  six  weeks  of  each  year  in  Chicago  with  the 
School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy  and  so  was  available;  I  gave 
a  good  many  lectures  in  that  city  each  year. 

Besides  the  lectures  at  the  School  of  Civics  and  the  Loyola 
School  of  Sociology,  I  gave  lectures  at  Chicago  University,  Chi¬ 
cago  Theological  Seminary,  McCormick  Theological  Seminary, 
Training  School  for  Deaconesses,  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Training  School, 
Chicago  Medical  College,  the  City  Club,  the  Women’s  Club,  the 
Women’s  City  Club,  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association,  the 
Bohemian  Women’s  Club,  the  Eugenics  Education  Association, 
several  settlements  and  others,  thirty-six  lectures  in  all  besides 


The  Execution 


409 


those  at  the  two  schools  first  mentioned.  Twelve  lectures  were 
given  in  eight  other  cities  and  I  attended  and  addressed  three 
state  conferences  in  successive  years. 

Social  welfare  work  in  Illinois  has  been  a  matter  of  much 
public  attention.  It  is  unfortunate  that  politics  plays  so  large 
a  part  in  the  social  work  of  the  state  but  in  spite  of  that  some 
progress  has  been  made ;  altho  the  condition  of  the  feeble-minded 
in  Chicago  is  still  a  matter  of  grave  concern.  It  is  greatly  com¬ 
plicated  with  the  crime  question  and  the  state  institution  has 
been  compelled  to  receive  too  large  a  proportion  of  juvenile  delin¬ 
quents  for  its  own  good  or  that  of  its  inmates.  Nowhere  more 
than  in  Illinois  is  there  a  need  of  some  institution  intermediate 
between  a  school  for  the  feeble-minded  and  a  reformatory,  which 
shall  partake  to  some  extent  of  the  nature  of  both. 

Indiana  is  my  home  state  and  most  of  what  I  did  there  has 
been  told  in  other  parts  of  this  book.  During  the  period  of  my 
work  for  the  Committee  on  Provision  however,  I  lectured  on 
twenty-one  occasions  in  nine  different  cities.  Our  executive  sec¬ 
retary  and  field  staff  had  an  important  part  in  the  development 
of  the  work  for  feeble-minded  in  this  state  which  is  on  a  scale 
of  scientific  knowledge  and  practical  utility  much  superior  to 
that  of  most  if  not  any  other  of  the  commonwealths. 

New  York  had  a  Committee  on  Provision  for  the  feeble-minded 
of  its  own  so  that  our  committee  was  called  on  for  little  work 
in  this  extremely  fruitful  field.  I  gave  a  few  lectures  for  the 
State  Charities  Aid  Association  which  has  its  committee  on  the 

v 

feeble-minded  and  answered  calls  from  several  women’s  clubs 
and  other  public  bodies.  In  all  I  visited  ten  cities  and  gave 
thirty-one  addresses;  of  these  thirteen  were  in  Buffalo  and  eight 
in  New  York  City. 

Ohio  was  the  first  of  the  Mid-Western  states  to  create  an 
institution  for  the  feeble-minded  and  its  institution  has  always 
held  high  rank.  Since  the  plan  of  special  classes  for  defectives 
in  public  schools  was  developed,  the  state  has  been  the  leader  in 
this  respect  with  the  possible  exception  of  New  Jersey.  A  few 
requests  for  assistance  came  from  Ohio  to  the  Committee  on 
Provision  especially  from  Toledo  and  Cleveland  but  no  system¬ 
atic  campaign  was  conducted.  In  all  I  gave  twenty-eight  lec¬ 
tures  there. 


410 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


In  Pennsylvania  much  of  my  work  was  under  the  direction 
of  the  Public  Charities  Association  which  was  conducting  an 
active  campaign  for  the  feeble-minded.  Including  lectures  at 
the  Meadville  Theological  Seminary  and  those  at  the  School  of 
Social  Workers  in  Philadelphia,  I  gave  fifty-one  lectures  in  nine 
different  cities  of  Pennsylvania.  Most  of  these  were  in  Pitts¬ 
burgh  and  Philadelphia.  No  systematic  campaign  was  con¬ 
ducted. 

Wisconsin  has  had  an  excellent  school  for  the  feeble-minded 
for  many  years,  but  unfortunately  the  provision  has  never  been 
adequate  enough  to  arrest  the  multiplication  of  the  mentally 
defective.  Early  in  1916,  the  Committee  on  Provision  was  asked 
for  assistance  in  the  promotion  of  a  second  state  institution. 
Five  lectures,  four  of  them  illustrated,  were  given  in  Milwaukee  ' 
in  January;  and  in  October  following  I  gave  the  whole  month 
to  the  state.  I  visited  eighteen  different  cities  and  gave  fifty- 
three  talks  and  addresses.  Some  of  these  were  to  colleges  and 
high-schools,  several  to  women’s  clubs  and  business  men’s  clubs. 
The  itinerary  was  chiefly  organized  and  greatly  aided  by  the 
Federation  of  Women’s  Clubs. 

It  is  somewhat  of  a  reproach  to  our  National  Government 
that  the  public  benevolent  institutions  of  the  District  of  Colum¬ 
bia,  are  not  the  best  of  their  kind  in  the  United  States,  but  we 
have  to  admit  as  well  as  deplore  the  fact.  Social  workers  in  the 
District  have  long  known  the  need  of  provision  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded  there.  A  survey  made  under  the  direction  of  the  Chil¬ 
dren’s  Bureau  showed  at  least  eight  hundred  cases  needing  care. 
The  few  feeble-minded  children  of  the  District  who  are  being 
cared  for  are  kept  by  contract  in  institutions  in  Pennsylvania, 
New  Jersey,  and  Virginia,  and  Congress  which  controls  all  dis¬ 
trict  affairs  and  ought  to  show  its  constitutent  states  the  way 
they  should  go,  lags  behind.  The  committee  was  called  on  for 
assistance  and  I  gave  a  few  lectures  in  Washington.  I  spent 
three  weeks  there  in  March  and  April  1918,  in  a  vain  effort  at 
lobbying  for  the  Tinkham  Bill  which  sought  to  provide  a  Dis¬ 
trict  institution. 

In  a  few  other  states,  lectures  have  been  given  by  request  of 
State  Boards  of  Charities  or  other  public  bodies  especially  at 
State  Conferences  of  Charities,  but  no  systematic  campaigns 


The  Execution 


411 


have  been  made.  The  following  is  the  list  of  the  states  touched 
in  those  sporadic  efforts :  Iowa,  Maine,  Maryland,  Massachusetts, 
Michigan,  Minnesota,  New  Hampshire,  Rhode  Island,  Texas, 
Washington,  fifty  lectures  in  all. 

British  North  America 

In  May  1913,  I  was  called  by  the  National  Council  of  Women 
to  Montreal  to  lecture  on  the  care  of  the  feeble-minded  in  the 
Dominion  of  Canada.  In  1917,  I  was  invited  by  a  committee  of 
social  workers  to  participate  in  a  series  of  meetings  in  Nova 
Scotia,  Prince  Edwards  Island,  and  Newfoundland.  The  total 
of  lectures  was  fifteen  in  five  cities,  three  provinces,  and  one 
crown-colony  (Newfoundland). 

National  and  State  Conferences 

Probably  the  best  forum  in  the  United  States  for  a  presenta¬ 
tion  of  a  measure  of  social  advance  is  the  National  Conference 
of  Social  Work  (formerly  the  National  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Correction)  and  only  second  to  it  are  the  numerous  state 
conferences  of  the  same  kind.  As  far  as  possible  the  Committee 
on  Provision  was  represented  during  its  active  life  at  these 
important  meetings. 

I  attended  the  National  Conference  at  Memphis  in  1914, 
Baltimore  in  1915,  Indianapolis  in  1916,  and  made  the  work  of 
the  Committee  known.  During  the  five  years  of  work  of  the 
extension  department  and  the  Committee,  I  addressed  state  con¬ 
ferences  in  twenty-five  states  some  of  them  at  more  than  one 
meeting.  These  conferences  were  always  useful  occasions  and 
in  three  instances  the  lectures  and  discussions  at  them  marked 
the  beginning  of  an  interest  and  a  movement  that  culminated 
in  the  creation  of  a  state  institution.  These  instances  were  in 
the  States  of  Florida,  Mississippi,  and  Tennessee;  while  the 
remarkable  development  in  the  South  as  a  whole  may  be  clearly 
traced  to  the  initial  impulse  at  the  first  two  Southern  Socio 
logical  Congresses,  held  at  Nashville  in  1912,  and  Atlanta  in 
1913. 

Schools  for  Social  Workers 

Here  again  a  fertile  field  for  effort  was  recognized  and  many 
opportunities  were  offered  in  it.  I  gave  courses  of  lectures  to 


412 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


schools  of  social  work,  in  Chicago,  Richmond,  Philadelphia  and 
Houston,  and  occasional  single  lectures  to  the  schools  in  Boston, 
St.  Louis,  and  New  York. 

At  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy  I  gave 
regular  lecture  courses  each  year  during  the  winter  and  summer 
terms.  While  most  of  these  lectures  were  not  directly  concerned 
with  the  special  work  of  the  Committee;  the  care  of  the  feeble¬ 
minded  was  always  made  prominent  and  the  relations  between 
feeble-mindedness  and  all  other  forms  of  social  defect  made  plain. 
In  the  course  of  the  five  years,  from  1913  to  1918,  at  the  summer 
and  winter  terms  fully  seven  hundred  and  fifty  new  social  work¬ 
ers  were  met  and  informed.  These  people  came  from  a  wide 
range  of  territory  especially  from  the  West,  Middle  West  and 
South.  There  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  no  lecturing  that 
could  be  done  elsewhere,  to  audiences  many  times  greater  in 
number,  could  be  more  useful  in  spreading  the  gospel  of  right 
dealing  with  the  feeble-minded. 

In  Chicago  also,  for  five  years  I  gave  a  regular  course  of  lec¬ 
tures  each  year  at  the  Loyola  School  of  Sociology,  a  Catholic 
institution  presided  over  by  a  broad-minded  man  of  the  Church 
who  is  deeply  interested  in  social  topics. 


Chapter  Three 


THE  RESULTS 

To  sum  up  the  results  achieved  in  the  thirty-three  states  of 
the  Union  where  the  Committee  operated;  we  may  say  that  in 
nine  states  in  which,  in  1913,  no  public  provision  for  the  feeble¬ 
minded  existed ;  state  institutions  have  been  built,  are  now  build¬ 
ing,  or  are  authorized  by  law;  in  each  of  five  states  which  had 
institutions  with  evidently  inadequate  accommodations,  one  or 
more  new  institutions  have  been  created;  in  one  a  private  char¬ 
itable  institution  has  been  established  and  is  being  conducted 
and  another  has  been  built  by  a  charitable  bequest  and  dedi¬ 
cated  to  the  city  in  which  it  stands.  In  four  others  substantial 
additions  have  been  made  to  existing  institutions;  and  in  nearly 
all  the  states  where  the  committee  has  been  active  its  influence 
on  the  development  of  special  classes  for  the  defectives  in  the 
public  schools  has  been  salutary.  That  is  to  say  in  nineteen 
states  very  positive  tangible  results  may  be  demonstrated  and  in 
the  other  fourteen  results  less  tangible  yet  positive  may  be  con¬ 
fidently  asserted. 

These  results  make  a  very  remarkable  showing.  They  have 
been  of  varying  importance  in  different  states.  I  am  not  claim¬ 
ing  credit  for  the  Committee  for  all  that  has  happened;  I  want 
to  acknowledge  with  gratitude  the  work  of  our  co-operators 
whom  I  have  mentioned  above.  But  I  can  fairly  claim  that  most 
of  the  results  of  which  I  tell  have  been  due  to  our  work  and  that 
my  particular  job  of  publicity  has  been  practically  an  exclusive 
contribution. 

In  considering  these  efforts  and  results  it  should  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  during  the  time  of  the  Committee’s  active  work  the 
great  War  was  in  progress  and  public  attention  was  so  much 
absorbed  by  it  that  most  strenuous  efforts  were  necessary  to 
secure  attention  to  the  campaigns  of  publicity  we  were  con¬ 
ducting. 


414 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


It  seems  proper  to  give  the  details  of  the  results  I  claim  and 
I  do  so  without  separating  what  was  done  by  the  department  of 
extension  and  what  by  the  Committee  on  Provision  since  the  two 
over-lapped  considerably  in  time.  Beginning  with  ISfew  Jersey 
where  the  results  are  due  to  our  work  added  to  the  efforts  of  the 
state  committee  with  the  constant  example  of  the  Training  School 
of  Vineland ;  these  things  have  come : 

First,  the  creation  of  the  Burlington  county  colony,  since 
taken  over  by  the  state ;  Second,  a  notable  increase  in  the  num¬ 
ber  of  special  classes  for  defectives  in  the  public  schools  and  a 
law  requiring  such  classes;  Third,  a  law  requiring  medical 
inspections  for  all  school  districts  in  the  state;  Fourth,  three¬ 
fold  increase  in  the  accommodations  at  the  state  institution  for 
women  and  girls  at  Vineland  and  double  the  number  of  state 
boys  at  the  Training  School;  Fifth,  the  acceptance  by  the  state 
of  the  Woodbine  colony  for  male  idiots  and  imbeciles ;  Sixth,  and 
perhaps  the  most  important,  a  general  understanding  and  ac¬ 
ceptance  by  public  opinion  of  the  theory  of  training  and  colony 
care  for  all  defectives,  an  acceptance  which  has  had  some  marked 
effects  on  other  institutions  besides  those  for  the  technically 
feeble-minded. 

I  give  other  results  by  states,  first  those  of  the  South  and  then 
others  in  alphabetical  order  only  premising  that  some  of  these 
results  have  matured  since  the  committee’s  work  slowed  down. 

In  the  Southland 

In  recounting  the  remarkable  results  in  this  part  of  the 
country  and  trying  to  understand  how  they  happened  there  are 
two  very  important  factors  to  be  borne  in  mind.  The  first ;  which 
applies  equally  all  over  the  country,  was  that  the  great  war  was 
in  progress;  everyone’s  mind  and  heart  had  been  stirred.  Great 
social  reforms  always  come  at  a  time  of  upheaval  and  turmoil. 
Men’s  minds  are  shaken  out  of  their  old  ruts;  people  begin  to 
ask  of  the  conventions  and  the  general  order  of  things,  the  all 
powerful  question,  Why?  And  when  you  ask  why  and  the 
answer  is  not  plain,  something  happens.  Such  times  are  the 
periods  of  change  and  development;  of  upsetting  old  things  and 
bringing  in  new. 


The  Results 


415 


The  second  factor  is  that  the  South  was  never  so  prosper¬ 
ous  in  material  things  before.  Her  chief  products  especially 
cotton  and  tobacco  were  in  great  demand,  and  at  high  prices. 
The  cotton  states  had  more  money  than  ever  and  the  people 
were  willing  to  spend.  Only  a  remarkably  good  cotton  market, 
for  instance,  could  have  induced  the  state  of  Mississippi  to  spend 
a  million  dollars  for  a  tuberculosis  hospital,  as  was  done  in  1917. 

There  were  other  contributory  causes;  those  above  stated 
were  sufficient  to  counterbalance  the  difficulty  of  attracting  pub¬ 
lic  attention  from  its  pre-occupation  with  the  war. 

The  list  of  achievements  in  the  South  is  as  follows :  Alabama, 
a  state  school  and  colony  now  approaching  completion  and  some 
increase  in  the  teaching  of  defectives  in  the  public  schools; 
Arkansas,  a  law  for  a  state  school  and  colony;  Delaware,  state 
school  and  colony  now  in  operation;  Florida,  state  colony  now 
in  operation ;  Georgia,  state  school  in  operation ;  Kentucky, 
vicious  law  abrogated,  additions  to  state  school  authorized ; 
Louisiana,  two  private  institutions  established,  state  school  and 
colony  begun;  Mississippi,  state  colony  and  school  in  operation; 
Missouri,  extension  of  institution ;  North  Carolina,  extension  and 
better  support  of  institution;  South  Carolina,  state  school  and 
colony  in  operation;  Tennessee,  state  institution  authorized; 
Texas,  state  school  extended;  Virginia,  additions  to  colony  for 
epileptics  and  new  institution  for  Colored  feeble-minded  now 
building. 

In  some  of  the  states  outside  the  South,  the  following 
occurred :  California,  a  second  institution  begun ;  Colorado, 
improvements  to  institution  and  better  classes  in  schools;  Con¬ 
necticut  improvements  to  state  institution;  Indiana,  one  addi¬ 
tional  colony  and  many  improvements  in  schools;  Ohio,  much 
popular  interest  aroused,  some  developments  in  public  schools; 
Pennsylvania,  one  additional  institution  established;  Wisconsin, 
one  additional  institution  and  much  improvement  in  special 
classes  in  public  schools. 

It  must  seem  strange  after  such  claims  as  above,  to  have  to 
record  the  fact  that  a  committee  which  could  score  so  great 
success  in  so  few  years  should  have  subsided  and  practically 
given  up  its  organization.  The  story  is  a  very  noteworthy  one, 
and  I  must  tell  it. 


416 


Five  Years  Adventuring  in  Propaganda 


When  E.  K.  Johnstone  and  I  caught  the  vision  of  the  possi¬ 
bilities  of  the  Committee  on  Provision  we  planned  positively  for 
a  five  years  program  of  pioneering.  We  did  not  hope  to  con¬ 
vert  the  Nation  to  our  views  in  that  period,  but  we  did  expect 
to  get  the  work  well  started.  Then  things  seemed  to  go  our  way, 
we  were  received  in  almost  every  state  with  approval,  often  with 
acclamation.  In  one  state  after  another  we  got  laws  enacted 
for  institutions  where  they  had  none  or  for  extensions  of  older 
ones.  After  success  seemed  so  positive  our  ambitions  widened 
and  we  hoped  to  continue  until  we  had  practically  covered  the 
country.  The  amount  of  money  needed  to  carry  on  the  work 
seemed  small  compared  to  its  value;  we  were  alone  in  the  field; 
we  were  demonstrating  success.  There  seemed  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  we  could  get  ample  support. 

But  when  the  National  Mental  Hygiene  Committee  got  fairly 
going  and  discovered  that  the  care  of  the  feeble-minded  was 
something  more  popular  and  essential  than  what  they  h(hd 
organized  to  do  for  the  insane;  and  so  desired  to  enlarge  their 
work  to  take  in  ours;  they  invited  our  Committee  to  become  a 
sub-committee  of  theirs ;  proposing  that  we  should  raise  the  funds 
we  needed  and  spend  them  under  the  direction  of  their  executive 
committee.  Of  course  our  Committee  could  not  accept  the  propo¬ 
sition.  To  raise  money  for  provision  for  the  feeble-minded  and 
let  it  be  expended  by  a  group  of  physicians;  who,  however  well 
qualified  to  treat  the  insane,  had  had  no  practical  experience 
with  those  for  whose  benefit  it  was  given ;  was  manifestly  out  of 
the  question.  We  felt  that  their  committee  being  largely  medical 
would  find  its  greatest  usefulness  in  the  care  of  the  insane  and 
in  the  field  of  surveys  and  investigations,  from  a  more  or  less 
scientific  viewpoint.  Our  interest  was  in  having  the  feeble¬ 
minded  recognized  and  given  proper  care  and  protection. 

Altho  our  Committee  was  mostly  composed  of  laymen;  when 
we  began,  in  December  1914,  many  of  the  superintendents  of 
institutions  for  the  feeble-minded  joined  us,  and  all  but  one  of 
them  were  medical  men.  It  had  long  been  customary,  in  spite  of 
one  or  two  notable  exceptions,  to  imagine  that  a  school  for 
feeble-minded  was  a  medical  institution  and  that  its  head  must 
be  a  physician.  As  the  Mental  Hygiene  Association  had  a  phy¬ 
sician  as  chief  with  the  title  of  medical  director ;  and  was  stress- 


•  The  Results 


417 


ing  the  medical  side;  and  our  officers  were  laymen  emphasizing 
the  educational  and  social  aspects;  this  was  all  too  much  for 
the  doctors;  and  most  of  them  deserted  us  for  what  they  con¬ 
sidered  a  medical  association.  For  the  first  year  or  two  their 
defection  did  us  little  harm. 

Unfortunately  our  treasurer  had  been  so  efficient  that  no  one 
else  had  thought  it  necessary  to  help  him  raise  money;  and  tho 
our  budget  was  a  very  modest  one,  some  money  was  necessary; 
when  he  accepted  service  with  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  went  to  France 
to  work  for  the  A.  E.  F.  he  left  us  with  enough  in  the  treasury 
to  continue  our  work  to  the  end  of  1917 ;  intending  to  come  home 
and  take  care  of  us  in  the  year  to  come.  But  tho  not  a  com¬ 
batant  he  was  a  victim  of  the  war  and  died  in  Paris. 

Our  president,  secretary,  and  executive  secretary  were  very 
modest  men.  They  did  not  even  make  our  own  subscribers  under¬ 
stand  how  much  we  had  effected  and  how  much  value  it  had.  In 
fact  our  subscribers  had  been  allowed  or  led  to  conceive  the  idea 
that  much  which  was  chiefly  due  to  our  work  had  been  achieved 
by  the  other  agency,  which  had  really  played  a  very  small  part 
in  it. 

The  result  was  that  by  the  Spring  of  1918,  our  chief  con¬ 
tributors,  not  realizing  how  successful  we  had  been,  were  enlisted 
by  the  other  organization;  our  funds  were  exhausted  and  the 
work  slowed  down  to  its  present  modest  program;  once  more  it 
has  become  the  extension  department  of  the  Vineland  Training 
School. 

However,  we  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  for  an 
appreciable  time  what  we  did  was  very  well  worth  while;  and 
when  our  work  ceased  it  left  us  with  the  consciousness  of  eminent 


success. 


-  • 


' 


■ 


»• 


■ 

• 

• 

PART  SEVEN 


ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  RED  CROSS 


(419) 


ADVENTURES  WITH  THE  RED  CROSS 


Chapter  One 

WITH  THE  BOYS  IN  CAMP 

In  the  summer  of  1918  I  enjoyed  a  long  vacation  the  first  for 
many  years.  The  Committee  on  Provision  for  the  Feeble-Minded 
was  slowing  down  its  work,  and  I  was  waiting  to  hear  what  it 
would  decide  to  do  uncertain  what  was  to  be  my  next  adventure. 
Among  my  holiday  incidents  was  one  of  ten  days  lecturing  at  the 
Chicago  School  of  Social  Work,  where,  with  other  classes,  I  had 
one  made  up  of  home  service  workers  of  the  Red  Cross.  A  second 
vacation  event  was  a  very  pleasant  two  weeks  with  the  Summer 
School  for  Social  Workers  at  Blue  Ridge  N.  C. 

I  had  spent  many  happy  weeks  in  the  delightful  climate  of 
the  North  Carolina  highlands  with  this  school  during  previous 
summers.  This  year  the  classes  were  fuller  than  ever.  Among 
other  incidents  was  a  training  class  for  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries, 
who  were  preparing  for  work  with  the  boys  in  the  camps  and 
with  the  A.  E.  F.  overseas. 

That  summer  was  one  never  to  be  forgotten.  The  war  was 
going  our  way.  Our  brave  fellows  in  France  were  giving  splen¬ 
did  account  of  themselves.  Nothing  was  too  good  for  our  sol¬ 
diers  and  their  families.  The  wonderful  work  of  the  Red  Cross 
was  at  its  height;  under  its  banner  people  of  all  ranks  and 
classes  were  coming  together  were  working  and  feeling  together 
as  never  before.  Thousands,  perhaps  millions,  of  our  citizens 
realized  almost  for  the  first  time  what  it  means  to  say  “I  am 
an  American”.  We  had  accepted  the  dire  necessity  of  war  with 
the  utmost  reluctance ;  yet  some  of  the  more  hopeful ;  I  of  course 
as  an  incorrigible  optimist  among  them ;  dared  to  hope  that  one 
immensely  valuable  salvage  from  the  horrible  wreck  of  war  was  to 
be  a  new  birth  of  the  Nation  in  loyalty  to  high  ideals  of  citizen¬ 
ship,  in  unselfish  devotion  to  social  welfare. 

(421) 


422 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


An  old  friend,  Joseph  C.  Logan  of  Atlanta,  was  representing 
the  Red  Cross  at  the  summer  school.  One  afternoon  he  with  a 
professor  from  a  University  in  Texas  who  was  lecturing  to  the 
Y.  M.’s  and  I  took  a  ten  mile  tramp  among  and  over  the  moun¬ 
tains.  We  got  back  to  Robert  E.  Lee  Hall  at  5:15.  The  swim¬ 
ming  pool  on  the  Campus  with  its  deliciously  cold,  mountain¬ 
spring  water,  closes  at  5:30.  I  said  “come  on  fellows,  we  are 
just  in  time  for  a  plunge  before  supper/’  but  they  declared  what 
they  needed  was  a  hot  shower.  The  next  morning  they  were 
nursing  their  aching  muscles  while  I  was  ready  for  another 
tramp.  I  am  old  enough  to  be  Joe’s  father  and  then  some,  the 
professor  is  my  junior  by  twenty  years  but  they  decided  that  I 
was  the  youngest  man  of  the  trio. 

The  next  afternoon  Logan  offered  me  a  most  attractive  job. 
The  Red  Cross  was  then  scouring  the  country  for  trained  social 
workers;  home  service  was  seen  to  be  fully  as  important  as 
military  relief;  hundreds  of  chapters  wanted  executive  secre¬ 
taries.  Each  division  needed  a  score  of  field  supervisors;  every 
training  camp  had  to  have  several  associate  directors  of  civilian 
relief.  Logan  was  director  of  civilian  relief  of  the  Southern 
division  and  he  invited  me  to  enlist  under  the  Red  Cross  banner 
as  associate  field  director  in  charge  of  home  service  in  one  of  the 
camps.  It  was  flattering  to  be  offered  a  young  man’s  job  once 
again  and  like  every  good  citizen  I  was  more  than  pleased  to  be 
an  active  as  well  as  a  contributing  member  of  the  Red  Cross. 

I  was  assigned  to  Camp  Greene,  near  Charlotte  N.  C.  and 
stayed  there  until  armistice  day.  I  have  had  many  fascinating 
tasks  but  never  one  equal  to  that  of  my  work  among  the  soldiers. 
I  have  always  loved  case-work  and  have  frequently  regretted  that 
circumstances  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  do  much  of  it.  Now 
I  was  on  duty  seven  days  a  week,  from  eight  A.  M.  to  ten  P.  M. ; 
and  often  worked  until  midnight  getting  ready  for  the  next 
morning  but  the  hours  went  by  like  minutes.  One  human  inter¬ 
est  story  after  another,  many  sad,  some  tragic,  a  few  humorous ; 
all  vividly  interesting;  kept  me  intensely  occupied  from  day¬ 
break  to  midnight. 

Camp  Greene  was  one  of  the  smaller  ones ;  while  I  was  there 
we  had  from  15,000  to  20,000  men  in  training.  Most  of  these 
were  class  A  men  and  these  were  the  ones  who  made  the  fewest 


With  the  Boys  in  Camp 


423 


calls  for  assistance.  There  were  some  labor  battalions  of 
negroes ;  and  a  few  colored  regiments  seemingly  fit  for  the  front 
line.  Besides  these  capable  fellows,  there  were  development  bat¬ 
talions  of  men  who  needed  special  attention  in  the  way  of  phys¬ 
ical  upbuilding  and  a  “casual  camp”  full  of  derelicts;  all  phys¬ 
ically  and  many  mentally  defective,  who  should  have  been  dis¬ 
charged  promptly  but  who,  owing  to  the  pitiful  red  tape  which 
seems  to  tangle  up  all  army  affairs,  were  being  kept  in  idleness. 
The  captain  in  command  of  the  casuals  was  a  fine  officer  of  the 
regular  army  who  bitterly  resented  his  job.  He  told  me  he  had 
come  to  camp  to  train  soldiers  and  they  had  made  him  keeper 
of  an  imbecile  asylum. 

Our  Red  Cross  hut  was  close  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  headquarters 
and  our  relations  with  the  Y.  M.’s  were  pleasant  and  mutually 
helpful.  We  used  their  post-office  and  kept  our  money  overnight 
in  their  safe.  I  had  occasional  opportunities  of  co-operation 
with  the  Knights  of  Columbus  and  the  Jewish  organization  and 
was  able  to  instil  some  charity  organization  ideas  into  them  and 
found  prompt  and  hearty  response. 

My  predecessor  in  the  camp  had  not  managed  to  stand  in 
with  the  officers  and  the  staff  and  complained  that  they  had  been 
unsympathetic  and  even  obstructive;  but  I  found  them  the  very 
reverse.  All  that  was  necessary  to  get  any  facts  or  service  I 
wanted  was  to  find  the  right  man  and  put  the  request  in  the 
right  way.  My  relations  with  the  officers  both  commissioned 
and  non-commissioned  as  well  as  the  headquarters  staff  were 
pleasant  and  co-operative.  During  my  stay  I  only  ran  up  against 
one  really  hard-boiled  officer. 

The  requests  of  the  enlisted  men  for  help  were  of  a  widely 
varying  character;  many  were  for  assistance  in  getting  fur¬ 
loughs  and  a  few  for  discharges.  Our  rule  was  that  the  Red 
Cross  must  not  initiate  such  applications ;  we  were  only  to  secure 
information  on  request  of  the  officer  in  command.  Most  of  the 
officers  whom  I  met  were  interested  in  their  men  and  wishful  to 
grant  their  reasonable  requests.  They  availed  themselves  gladly 
of  the  services  of  the  Red  Cross  in  securing  positive  evidence  of 
facts ,  but  they  did  not  ask  our  opinions.  One  Saturday  afternoon 
at  three  o’clock  a  top-sergeant  asked  me  by  phone  to  get  informa¬ 
tion  about  the  wife  of  a  man  who  wanted  a  furlough  to  visit  her 


424 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


as  she  was  on  her  death  bed.  I  sent  the  inquiry  by  wire  to  the 
chapter  where  the  woman  lived  at  Raleigh  N.  O. ;  the  executive 
secretary  visited  the  woman  at  once,  found  she  had  recovered, 
promptly  wired  an  answer  and  at  five  o’clock  I  called  up  the 
sergeant  with  a  satisfactory  reply.  The  next  morning,  Sunday, 
T  had  to  find  a  man  for  an  important  piece  of  business,  who  had 
been  in  the  same  command  and  phoned  my  friend  the  sergeant 
about  him.  He  told  me  the  man  had  been  transferred  a  year 
before  and  he  did  not  know  his  present  location.  At  it  was 
Sunday  morning,  the  personnel  office  at  headquarters  was  not 
open  or  I  could  have  got  the  soldier’s  present  command  in  a  few 
minutes.  The  matter  was  urgent  and  I  prepared  for  a  trouble¬ 
some  hunt.  Just  as  I  was  starting  the  sergeant  called  again; 
said  he  knew  I  was  busy  while  he  had  plenty  of  time  so  he  would 
hunt  him  by  wire  for  me.  In  an  hour  he  gave  me  the  location, 
having  followed  the  man  over  the  phone  thru  three  transfers. 

Almost  every  day  there  were  several  of  these  requests  for 
information  about  furloughs  and  usually  the  chapters  answered 
very  promptly.  One  boy  wanted  to  go  home  to  see  a  sick  wife 
and  baby  at  Charleston,  W.  Va.  The  chapter  promptly  replied 
that  the  woman  had  recovered ;  the  child  was  still  sick  but  having 
excellent  care  in  the  Red  Cross  hospital.  The  husband  and 
father  was  divided  in  his  feelings  between  happiness  that  his  wife 
was  well  and  regret  that  he  could  not  have  a  furlough.  His 
worry  about  the  baby  was  that  it  had  never  been  christened,  and 
he  begged  that  the  Red  Cross  would  summon  a  priest  to  the 
hospital  and  give  the  baby  the  name  of  Cora. 

Visiting  the  hospital  one  day  the  adjutant  asked  me  for  help 
to  locate  the  relatives  of  a  negro,  dead  of  flu,  about  whom  he  had 
been  telegraphing  vainly  for  two  days  past,  wanting  to  send  the 
corpse  home  for  burial.  I  told  him  I  would  try.  The  chapter 
answered  by  wire  the  next  day  with  the  correct  location  and 
thenceforth  the  adjutant  was  stronger  than  ever  for  the  Red 
Cross.  Not  all  the  chapters  were  so  well  officered;  often  the 
family  wanted  lived  out  in  the  country  and  in  one  case  it  was 
located  midway  between  two  chapters,  each  of  which  claimed  it 
belonged  to  the  other.  But  many  stories  are  on  record  of  long 
and  toilsome  journeys  made  by  self-sacrificing  executive  secre¬ 
taries  over  hills  and  thru  swamps,  along  roads  that  were  mere 


With  the  Boys  in  Camp 


425 


trails,  to  find  families  in  trouble.  The  devotion  and  utter  dis¬ 
regard  of  their  own  ease  and  comfort;  often  even  their  own 
health ;  which  many  faithful  Red  Crossers  exhibited  rank  up  well 
with  the  endurance  of  the  boys  in  the  trenches  or  the  nurses  in 
the  hospitals. 

One  of  the  most  pathetic  cases  I  had  was  of  an  Italian  from 
the  Bronx,  New  York,  one  of  the  refined  delicate-looking  kind 
one  sees,  rarely,  among  his  people.  He  had  been  drafted  and 
given  only  twenty-four  hours  notice.  His  wife  had  suffered  a 
miscarriage  a  few  days  before  and  he  left  her  in  bed  with  only 
|5.00  in  money.  They  were  new-comers  to  the  city,  had  no 
friends  or  relatives  near;  were  living  in  furnished  rooms  among 
strangers.  He  showed  me  a  letter  from  his  wife  which  told  how 
she  had  tried  to  go  to  work;  she  was  a  seamstress;  but  had 
fainted  on  the  street  and  thought  the  best  she  could  do  would 
be  to  go  back  to  bed  and  stay  there  till  she  died.  I  assured  him 
his  wife  should  have  friends  and  help  at  once  and  wired  to  the 
Bronx  chapter  begging  prompt  attention.  No  answer  came  the 
first  nor  the  second  day,  the  poor  fellow  coming  in  morning, 
noon  and  evening  with  the  pathetic  question  “have  you  heard 
from  my  wife  yet?”  The  third  day  as  no  answer  came  to  a  sec¬ 
ond  wire,  I  tried  to  get  Alexander  Wilson,  who  was  manager  of 
the  Atlantic  division  in  New  York,  to  call  up  the  Bronx  people. 
I  had  a  claim  on  him  as  he  was  an  old  pupil  of  mine  in  the 
School  of  Philanthropy ;  but  it  was  just  at  the  time  of  the  Perth 
Amboy  explosion  and  he  was  busy  about  that.  However  in  the 
evening  of  the  fourth  day  came  a  long  wire  from  the  chapter; 
they  had  found  the  woman,  got  her  a  physician  and  a  nurse  and 
would  take  good  care  of  her  until  she  was  well  and  see  her  thru 
until  the  allotment  and  allowance  checks  began  to  come.  When 
I  read  the  message  to  him  he  buried  his  face  in  his  hands  and 
wept  real  tears  which  trickled  thru  his  fingers;  and  I  confess 
my  own  upper  eyelid  was  not  quite  rigid  just  then.  It  is  easy 
to  see  the  tremendous  help  to  the  morale  of  the  boys  which  came 
out  of  such  home  service  for  their  families. 

During  October  and  November  the  epidemic  of  flu  was  raging 
and  for  several  weeks  the  death  rate  in  camp  was  from  twenty- 
five  to  thirty-five  daily.  Of  course  this  gave  us  many  calls  for 
information  from  all  over  the  land.  One  day  came  a  nicely  type- 


426 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


written  letter  signed  in  a  very  pretty  hand,  addressed  to  the 
“Ked  Cross  man  at  Camp  Greene”  begging  for  some  word  about 

Lawrence  H - ,  of  a  certain  regiment,  from  whom  the  writer 

had  not  heard  for  several  weeks.  I  found  Lawrence  in  the  hos¬ 
pital  recovering  from  flu  and  still  in  bed.  He  was  a  fine  looking 

fellow  and  when  I  asked  him  if  he  knew  Miss  Fannie  C - ,  he 

blushed  and  said  “yes” ;  I  asked  him  if  she  was  the  only  girl  and 
when  they  were  going  to  be  married.  He  said  as  soon  as  he  got 
out  of  the  army.  The  doctor  had  just  told  him  he  might  get  up 
the  next  day  and  he  promised  to  write  at  once.  I  wrote  to  Miss 
Fannie  telling  her  Lawrence  would  soon  be  well  and  what  a  fine 
fellow  he  looked,  one  of  whom  I  would  be  proud  for  a  son ;  that 
he  had  told  me  of  their  romance  and  I  hoped  they  would  be  very 
happy.  In  reply  came  a  charming  little  note  of  thanks  conclud¬ 
ing  with  the  remark  that  henceforth  she  would  have  no  anxiety 
about  him  since  I  had  taken  a  personal  interest  in  his  case.  The 
dear  girl  did  not  consider  that  there  were  15,000  others  in  camp 
besides  her  lover  for  me  to  be  interested  in. 

Fully  half  the  work  of  the  Red  Cross  home  service  before  the 
armistice  and  almost  as  much  since  was  due  to  the  delays  and 
blunderings  of  the  War  Risk  Insurance  Bureau.  The  govern¬ 
ment  had  undertaken  an  impossible  task  and  delays  and  errors 
were  inevitable.  It  was  an  exceptionally  fortunate  beneficiary 
who  got  her  first  allotment  check  wthin  six  months  of  the  sol¬ 
dier’s  enrolment  and  delays  of  twelve  or  eighteen  months  were 
frequent.  This  delay  was  all  the  more  exasperating  to  those  the 
soldier  had  left  at  home  and  to  the  men  themselves,  because  as 
half  the  man’s  pay  was  held  back  to  be  sent  to  the  beneficiary  it 
was  difficult  for  the  soldier  himself  to  send  any  money  to  them. 
One  of  the  bitterest  complaints  was  that  the  government  kept 
back  the  allotment  from  the  man  and  did  not  send  it  nor  the 
additional  allowance  to  his  family. 

An  Irishman  brought  me  a  letter  from  his  mother  in  Cork, 
to  whom  he  had  made  an  allotment,  enclosing  a  demand  from 
the  U.  S.  for  the  re-payment  of  money  which  was  supposed  to 
have  been  sent  to  her  but  to  which  she  was  not  entitled.  Whether 
she  ought  to  have  had  the  money  or  not,  I  did  not  ascertain,  but 
as  he  had  been  enrolled  for  a  year,  and  the  mother  had  never 
received  any  of  the  money  she  was  asked  to  return,  it  did  not 


With  the  Boys  in  Camp 


427 


seem  to  matter  very  much,  except  that  the  U.  S.  Army  was  made 
a  laughing  stock. 

The  War  Department  is  properly  punctilious  about  names 
and  initials  and  the  enrolling  officers  were  often  as  careless  as 
the  department  is  particular.  There  were  many  thousands  of 
allotment  and  allowance  checks  undelivered  because  of  a  mis¬ 
spelled  name  or  a  changed  address.  The  post-office  regulations 
were  as  strict  as  those  of  the  War  department.  A  mis-directed 
letter  cannot  be  forwarded  to  a  new  address  but  must  be  re¬ 
turned  to  Washington.  Such  cases  came  to  the  Red  Cross  to 
hunt  down  and  correct.  One  thing  a  department  cannot  under¬ 
take  is  the  discovery  of  its  own  errors;  it  will  make  corrections 
when  a  sufficient  number  of  documents,  supported  by  a  sufficient 
number  of  affidavits,  have  been  filed  in  a  sufficient  number  of 
offices,  but  it’s  a  slow  and  wearying  job. 

Many  cases  which  took  long  and  patient  work  to  adjust  came 
because  enrolment  officers  were  ignorant  of  the  law,  and  did  not 
even  read  the  blanks  which  they  made  the  men  sign.  The  com¬ 
monest  error  had  regard  to  the  application  for  the  allowances. 
An  allotment  was  compulsory  if  the  draftee  had  dependent  rela¬ 
tives,  the  allowance  to  supplement  it  had  to  be  applied  for.  While 
I  was  in  camp,  among  a  dozen  or  more  officers  and  clerks  whom 
I  questioned,  I  only  found  two  who  knew  that  the  allowance  did 
not  automatically  follow  allotment.  Yet  the  enlistment  blank 
had  a  place  to  show  application  for  it.  The  army  was  not  alone 
in  its  blunderings,  some  of  the  Red  Cross  agents  were  often 
guilty.  My  own  predecessor  as  associate  field  director  was  one 
of  the  ignorant  ones  about  allowances.  And  of  course  the  care¬ 
lessness  and  the  illiteracy  of  so  many  of  the  draftees  were  causes 
of  vast  numbers  of  mistakes. 

I  had  one  case  of  a  Sicilian  on  the  verge  of  mutiny  or  worse, 
in  fact  he  had  threatened  to  stick  his  knife  into  his  top-sergeant. 
He  said  they  had  compelled  him  to  make  an  allotment  to  a 
dependent  daughter  who  lived  with  her  grandfather  in  Italy. 
His  pay  had  been  depleted  monthly  yet  tho  he  had  been  in  the 
service  eighteen  months  she  had  not  received  any  money.  Then 
he  had  frequently  been  in  the  guard-house  for  various  offenses 
and  usually  his  pay  had  been  mulcted  for  those  periods  so  that 
some  months  he  had  nothing  coming.  His  theory  was  that  the 


4:28 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


whole  thing  was  a  scheme  to  defraud  him  and  he  thought  the  Red 
Cross  was  in  on  it,  as  my  predecessor  had  taken  his  complaint 
three  months  before  and  nothing  had  occurred.  The  man  was 
enrolled  as  “Carlo”  but  I  happened  to  notice  a  watch  charm  he 
wore  with  a  name  on  it,  and  found  his  name  was  “Corallo”,  and 
finally  managed  to  get  the  correction  made  and  the  claim 
straightened  out;  probably  within  six  months  after  the  armistice 
his  daughter  got  some  money. 

One  day  a  boy  from  Brooklyn,  just  out  of  the  hospital  after 
pneumonia  following  flu,  and  still  very  weak,  begged  me  to  wire 
to  his  father  from  whom  he  had  not  heard  for  three  weeks.  As  the 
wire  brought  no  answer  I  tried  the  chapter  and  got  a  dreadful 
story  of  domestic  tragedy.  Almost  the  whole  family  dead  of  the 
flu,  the  mother,  three  children,  an  aunt  and  two  cousins  all  gone, 
and  the  father  dangerously  ill  in  the  hospital.  The  news  of  the 
family’s  sickness  had  come  while  the  boy  was  himself  in  a  dan¬ 
gerous  condition  and  had  been  withheld  from  him  by  the  doctors. 
The  answer  from  the  chapter  came  by  wire  about  nine  o’clock 
at  night  and  I  called  up  the  top-sergeant  and  asked  him  to  tell 
Joseph.  He  said  “my  God,  I  can’t  tell  him  that;  you  must  tell 
him  yourself.”  I  told  him  to  let  the  boy  sleep  that  night  but 
to  send  him  to  me  in  the  morning;  in  the  meantime  to  get  the 
captain  to  put  in  a  rush  request  for  a  furlough  and  we  would 
get  the  boy  off  to  see  his  father  by  the  eleven  o’clock  train  the 
next  day.  In  the  morning  when  Joseph  came  and  I  told  him  the 
awful  story  his  only  remark  was  “how’s  my  dad?  how’s  my 
dad?”  I  said  his  dad  was  still  alive  and  he  must  go  to  him  at 
once.  “But,”  he  said,  “I  can’t  get  a  furlough  and  I  have  no 
money.”  I  told  him  the  furlough  would  be  ready  for  him  by  the 
time  he  got  back  to  his  command;  to  go  and  get  it,  then  take 
it  to  headquarters  for  his  order  for  transportation  at  one  cent 
a  mile,  to  come  back  to  me  with  them  and  I  would  let  him  have 
travel  money.  He  got  the  documents  and  I  lent  him  $15.00  of 
Red  Cross  funds  and  sent  him  in  the  Red  Cross  car  to  the  rail¬ 
road  station  at  Charlotte  just  in  time  to  make  the  train.  A  few 
weeks  later  he  returned  to  camp  told  me  his  father  was  getting 
well  and  he  made  good  the  loan  the  next  pay  day. 

One  of  the  most  vicious  devices  connected  with  the  draft  was 
one  that  allowed  a  peace  officer  to  arrest  a  supposed  draft-evader, 


With  the  Boys  in  Camp 


429 


bring  him  into  camp,  and  collect  $50.00  reward  which  was  de¬ 
ducted  from  the  draftee’s  pay.  This  was  practiced  mostly  with 
negroes  who  are  mortally  afraid  of  any  white  man  wearing  a 
uniform  or  sporting  a  star  and  timidly  submit  to  almost  any 
extortion.  Several  of  the  fellows  who  came  to  me  declared 
they  were  on  their  way  to  the  enrolment  office  when  some  deputy 
sheriff  arrested  them,  and  I  am  convinced  that  in  some  instances 
they  told  the  truth. 

I  had  two  negro  boys  who  had  been  working  for  the  Tal- 
lassee  Power  Co.,  at  Baden  N.  C.  each  of  whom  had  been  brought 
to  camp  by  a  deputy  sheriff  named  Tom  Manous.  Each  of  the 
boys  declared  he  was  coming  in  when  arrested;  each  had  some 
pay  coming  to  him  from  the  power  company  and  Manous  had 
collected  and  stolen  it,  in  addition  to  the  $50.00  per  head  reward. 

I  wrote  to  the  secretary  of  the  company,  and  was  told  that 
Manous  had  collected  the  money,  $13.75  in  one  case,  and  $21.50 
in  the  other;  that  he  was  “no  longer  in  the  company’s  employ” 
but  that  I  could  possibly  find  him  at  a  certain  address.  I  replied 
that  I  had  no  desire  to  find  Manous,  that  he  was  no  doubt  as 
irresponsible  as  he  was  scoundrelly;  that  he  had  not  robbed  the 
boys  but  the  power  company  since  he  had  no  authority  to  collect; 
that  the  company  therefore  still  owed  the  money  and  I  requested 
checks  for  the  amount.  In  three  days  I  got  a  check  for  $35.25, 
which  certainly  made  the  boys  glad,  altho  they  probably  lost  it 
all  at  craps  the  next  day. 

A  colored  boy  from  Florida  came  with  a  pitiful  tale  of  a 
sickly  wife,  two  little  children,  an  old  father  crippled  with  rheu¬ 
matism,  crops  on  a  little  farm  going  to  ruin  for  want  of  atten¬ 
tion;  a  store  keeper  worrying  the  woman  with  bills  for  food  and 
fertilizer;  and  tho  he  had  been  in  camp  eight  months,  the  gov¬ 
ernment  allowance  and  his  allotment  unpaid  so  that  the  woman 
was  desperate.  I  wrote  the  chapter  near  his  home  who  at  once 
took  up  the  case;  gave  the  woman  clothes  and  food;  arranged 
with  a  neighbor  to  have  the  crops  tended;  stood  off  the  store-  . 
keeper  telling  him  the  law  about  the  immunity  of  service-men’s 
debts  while  the  men  were  in  the  service;  and  promised  to  lend 
the  woman  enough  to  go  on  until  the  slow  moving  wheels  of  the 
bureau  at  Washington  got  round  to  paying  what  Uncle  Sam  owed 
her. 


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Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


There  were  many  cases  especially  among  the  colored  people  in 
which  the  family  was  better  off,  or  rather  better  supplied  with 
money,  when  the  one  who  ought  to  be  the  bread-winner  was  in 
the  service  than  they  ever  had  been  before.  A  wife  with  three 
children  was  entitled  to  half  her  husband’s  pay,  plus  a  govern¬ 
ment  allowance  which  made  her  income  fifty  dollars  per  month; 
often  much  more  than  she  ever  had  got  from  her  husband.  Some 
of  these  women  had  been  supporting  their  families  even  before 
their  men  were  drafted.  Now,  with  no  greedy  man  to  feed,  and 
a  steady  income  the  woman  gave  up  her  laundry  or  house- work, 
and  some  even  hired  a  less  fortunate  colored  sister  to  wash  for 
them.  A  very  few  thrifty  ones  kept  on  working  and  saved  their 
money,  some  even  buying  a  little  home;  but  these  were  the  rare 
exception ;  in  most  cases,  it  simply  meant  fine  clothes,  more  meat 
to  eat  and  idleness.  In  some  Southern  cities,  the  calls  for  charity 
were  notably  fewer  in  the  winters  of  ’17  and  ’18  than  before ;  and 
this  was  not  all  because  of  general  prosperity. 

Again  when  the  first  check  came,  owing  to  the  delays  of  the 
overworked  bureau,  it  was  usually  the  accumulation  of  six,  nine 
or  twelve  monthly  payments.  This  caused  much  extravagance 
among  poor  people  who  had  never  in  their  lives  handled  sums 
of  more  than  fifteen  or  twenty  dollars.  On  the  other  hand  were 
the  numerous  cases  of  men  who  in  the  flush  times  of  1914  to 
1917  had  been  making  twice  as  much  per  week  as  the  army  paid 
them  per  month  and  their  families  were  real  sufferers  by  the 
war. 

I  had  one  case  which  came  near  ending  my  service  with  the 
Red  Cross.  A  negro  came  wifh  the  pitiful  story  that  he  had  been 
drafted  from  Sheffield,  Ala.,  where  he  was  working  on  the  nitrate 
plant,  earning  $3.30  per  day,  out  of  which  he  sent  $10.00  each 
week  to  his  old  mother  in  Memphis.  The  mother,  tho  feeble,  did 
a  little  washing,  and  with  his  help  took  care  of  two  little  chil¬ 
dren  and  a  helpless  crippled  boy.  I  got  his  story  about  the  fam¬ 
ily  confirmed  by  the  Red  Cross  at  Memphis.  The  poor  fellow 
had  been  in  camp  three  months  but  had  drawn  no  pay  and  was 
desperate  about  sending  no  money  to  his  mother.  He  was  with 
one  of  the  labor  battalions  and  his  top-sergeant  admitted  that 
his  story  was  true.  I  called  up  the  adjutant  and  told  him  that 
I  had  found  many  bad  cases  but  that  this  was  the  worst;  that  I 


With  the  Boys  in  Camp 


431 


proposed  to  have  satisfaction  and  if  I  could  not  get  it  in  camp 
I  should  resign  from  the  Red  Cross  by  wire  that  day  and  go  to 
Washington;  that  I  should  begin  with  secretary  Baker  whom 
I  knew  well;  failing  with  him,  I  should  try  vice-president  Mar¬ 
shall  who  had  been  my  neighbor  in  Indiana;  and  if  I  could  get 
nothing  done  by  either  of  them  I  should  try  the  president;  but 
that  I  should  devote  my  time  to  this  and  some  other  cases  until 
I  made  myself  such  a  nuisance  to  the  government  that  they 
would  either  send  me  to  Leavenworth  or  treat  the  draftees  to  a 
little  justice. 

The  adjutant  invited  me  to  his  office  and  told  me  he  had  an 
even  fifty  negroes  from  Memphis  in  the  same  fix;  that  they  had 
never  been  enrolled ;  that  he  had  not  a  line  of  writing  about  one 
of  them.  I  asked  him  what  he  proposed  to  do  about  it  and  he 
said  he  would  give  them  a  provisional  enrolment  the  next  day 
and  pay  them  for  the  three  months  they  had  been  in  camp  even 
if  he  got  broke  for  doing  it.  I  begged  him  to  pay  them  in  full 
not  deducting  any  allotments;  to  which  he  agreed.  The  negro 
boy  came  to  my  office  in  the  evening  and  when  I  told  him  he  was 
to  get  ninety  dollars  the  next  day  he  wept  and  said  “Bress  Gord, 
massa,  den  I  can  send  my  old  mammy  some  money”. 

A  fine  looking  man  came  in  one  day  and  begged  information 
about  securing  a  discharge;  he  had  a  slight  defect  of  vision  and 
was  not  getting  any  military  training.  He  was  an  electrician 
having  some  special  ability  about  what  they  call  “static”.  He 
showed  me  a  letter  from  the  superintendent  of  the  power  com¬ 
pany  in  Pennsylvania,  for  which  he  was  working  when  he  was 
drafted,  offering  him  his  old  job  at  $10.00  per  day  as  soon  as  he 
could  get  a  discharge.  In  a  camp  with  many  miles  of  wiring 
and  hundreds  of  electrical  appliances,  the  only  work  they  could 
give  this  highly  competent  electrician  was  to  wash  dishes  in 
the  hospital  kitchen. 

I  told  him  as  a  Red  Cross  man  I  could  do  nothing  for  him 
but  I  suggested  a  plan.  I  asked  him  if  the  company  was  sup¬ 
plying  power  to  any  factories  which  made  government  supplies 
and  he  said  scores  of  them.  Then  I  said  “your  job  is  easy.  Get 
a  letter  from  the  superintendent  addressed  to  the  commandant 
of  this  camp,  asking  him  to  grant  you  an  indefinite  furlough  so 
that  you  can  work  for  him  and  help  supply  the  aforesaid  plants 


432 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


with  power.”  He  took  my  advice  and  got  the  furlough,  which 
is  practically  a  discharge,  the  very  day  the  superintendent’s 
letter  came.  I  regret  to  say  that  an  instance  of  such  prompt 
action  was  a  rare  exception  to  the  rule. 

There  were  many  other  incom/petents  whom  the  army  was 
feeding,  clothing  and  paying  who  could  never  be  made  soldiers 
and  were  not  able  nor  the  right  complexion  for  the  labor  bat¬ 
talions.  It  was  hard  for  a  non-military  man  to  understand  why 
these  were  not  discharged.  Many  of  these  did  not  want  a  dis¬ 
charge,  they  were  delighted  to  be  better  fed  and  clothed  than 
they  ever  had  been  before;  but  there  were  many  cases  of  great 
hardship  even  worse  than  that  of  my  friend  the  electrician.  One 
of  these  was  a  young  fellow  from  Florida.  He  was  an  enthusi¬ 
astic  American  citizen,  and  had  been  eager  to  be  a  soldier.  Five 
times  he  had  enlisted  in  different  places  and  five  times  he  was 
rejected  as  under  weight  and  having  a  weak  heart.  Then  sup¬ 
posing  he  was  entirely  unfit  for  the  army  and  therefore  immune 
from  the  draft,  he  rented  some  land,  borrowed  some  money  and 
put  ten  acres  in  celery  and  lettuce.  Just  as  the  season  began  he 
was  drafted  and  this  time  was  accepted  and  mustered  in.  When 
he  got  to  the  camp  he  was  again  examined  and  rejected  for  train¬ 
ing  but  they  kept  him  there  doing  police  duty  round  the  tents  or 
similar  very  light  work.  His  father  was  a  periodic-insane  man, 
utterly  unreliable,  quite  sane  for  a  week  or  two  and  then  quite 
insane  for  months.  His  mother  was  old  and  weak.  He  showed 
me  a  letter  from  her  telling  him  she  was  trying  to  save  his  crop, 
“but  what  can  one  old  woman  do  with  five  acres  of  lettuce?” 
His  crop  which  should  have  netted  him  $400.00  per  acre  was 
going  to  ruin ;  it  seemed  impossible  to  get  it  cared  for.  Of  course 
I  had  to  tell  him  I  could  only  help  him  with  advice;  but  I  told 
him  how  to  get  the  application  for  a  discharge  initiated  by  his 
friends  at  home  thru  the  draft  board  who  perhaps  by  this  time 
had  realized  their  mistake.  The  poor  fellow  was  utterly  discour¬ 
aged  his  morale  all  gone.  I  told  him  to  brace  up.  I  reminded  him 
that  Uncle  Sam  has  many  nephews  and  some  of  them  will  make 
mistakes ;  those  who  drafted  him  had  done  so ;  but  I  said  “suppose 
you  had  been  able  for  training  had  gone  to  France,  and  thru  the 
mistake  of  one  of  the  commanding  officers,  who  also  make  mis¬ 
takes  in  the  field  sometimes,  you  had  been  killed;  this  mistake 


With  the  Boys  in  Camp 


433 


has  cost  you  a  year’s  time  and  $4000.00,  but  that  would  have  been 
worse.”  But  I  told  him  to  remember  he  had  done  his  duty,  he 
had  come  when  his  country  called ;  he  was  one  of  the  great  army 
and  had  worn  the  khaki ;  and  in  years  to  come  when  the  memory 
of  the  errors  of  the  present  had  faded  and  for  all  his  long  life 
after  he  would  be  glad  and  proud  that  he  had  been  here.  My 
eloquence  seemed  to  have  a  good  effect  on  the  boy’s  morale;  he 
thanked  me  and  went  away,  looking  quite  cheerful. 

Just  the  day  before  I  left  the  camp,  a  morale  officer  was 
appointed,  a  fine  young  fellow  who  appeared  to  have  lots  of  good 
sense  and  good  feeling.  His  job  was  to  correct  just  such  things 
as  I  have  been  telling  about.  I  met  him  at  headquarters  and 
told  him  of  one  or  two  cases.  He  came  to  our  hut  and  spent  sev¬ 
eral  hours  asking  questions  and  hearing  about  a  number  of  the 
men  I  had  on  a  list  as  being  proper  to  discharge,  and  I  have  no 
doubt  many  things  wrong  were  set  right  after  I  left. 

On  the  morning  of  November  11th  before  we  knew  of  the 
armistice,  I  got  orders  to  report  to  Atlanta,  the  headquarters  of 
the  division,  for  work  of  another  kind.  I  left  the  camp  with 
much  regret.  My  work  there  was  an  intensely  interesting  one 
and  I  learned  lessons  of  much  value.  One  especially  which  I 
perhaps  did  not  need  was  that  on  “passing  the  buck”.  I  had 
always  despised  that  cowardly  practice;  perhaps  sometimes  I 
have  been  too  ready  to  assume  responsibility  which  I  might 
properly  have  shoved  off  my  own  on  to  other’s  shoulders.  But 
certainly  after  a  little  army  experience  the  fear  of  taking  respon¬ 
sibility  looked  more  contemptible  than  ever.  It  is  to  me  an 
unsolved  enigma  how  the  same  men  can  be  such  moral  cowards 
in  the  camp  and  so  lion-hearted  so  valiant  against  the  enemy  in 
the  field. 

Another  lesson  was  the  difficulty  if  not  impossibility  of  gov¬ 
ernmental  management  of  any  business  which  is  not  purely  rou¬ 
tine.  I  had  long  had  a  leaning  towards  government  ownership 
and  governmental  management  of  public  utilities.  But  what  I 
saw  at  Camp  Greene  and  what  I  have  encountered  since  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  Red  Cross  has  changed  my  opinion  radically.  I 
saw  waste  and  mismanagement  on  every  hand  especially  appal¬ 
ling  waste  of  man  power.  If  any  private  business  should  be  run 
as  we  were  then  running  our  training  camps,  after  more  than  a 


434 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


year’s  experience,  it  could  not  last  a  month.  If  a  commercial 
insurance  company  were  to  be  conducted  as  inefficiently  as  was 
the  Bureau  of  War  Risk  Insurance,  the  U.  S.  Government’s 
inspectors  would  put  it  out  of  business  very  shortly.  And  what 
has  happened  since  the  war  has  ended  has  only  confirmed  my 
distrust.  Of  all  the  superstitions  which  paralyze  mankind,  that 
of  the  omnipotence  of  government  seems  the  stupidest.  It  is 
almost  omnipotent  for  evil,  it  is  futile  indeed  for  good. 


Chapter  Two 


ADVENTURES  AS  DIRECTOR  OF  SUPERVISION 

The  new  task  which  was  given  me  on  November  12th,  was  of  a 
widely  different  nature  and  called  for  different  qualities  from 
those  needed  in  camp.  I  no  longer  had  to  deal  with  the  clients 
nor  even  directly  with  those  who  dealt  with  them.  My  work  was 
to  direct  supervisors,  who  in  turn  were  to  counsel  with  and  help 
the  chapters  and  their  executive  secretaries. 

The  armistice  had  ended  the  fighting,  it  had  not  ended  the 
war.  The  chapters  all  had  as  much  to  do  as  ever;  no  longer' 
rolling  bandages,  nor  knitting  sweaters,  but  the  home  service 
was  vastly  increased.  There  was  a  general  feeling  of  relief  from 
the  tension  that  had  kept  every  one  in  line.  It  was  necessary  to 
make  people  see  that  their  work  was  not  done,  that  we  still  had 
a  tremendous  task  before  us  until  the  troops  should  come  back 
across  the  sea ;  and  a  still  greater  one  after  they  returned. 

The  work  at  division  headquarters  had  been  done  thru  a 
number  of  departments,  each  with  its  head  and  its  staff  of  work¬ 
ers,  and  it  was  a  highly  complicated  job  to  re-organize  and  cen¬ 
tralize  it.  It  was  undertaken  slowly.  There  were  two  main 
departments  that  of  military  and  that  of  civilian  relief,  and  the 
relations  between  them  had  sometimes  been  strained.  My  work 
was  supervision  of  home  service  and  belonged  under  civilian 
relief.  I  cannot  tell  the  story  of  re-adjustment  which  went  on 
all  thru  the  vast  Red  Cross  organization.  That  would  take  a 
volume  in  itself  and  I  have  neither  time  nor  knowledge  to  write 
it,  and  I  had  only  a  small  share  in  it. 

We  had  five  states  in  our  Southern  division ;  North  Carolina, 
South  Carolina,  Tennessee,  Georgia,  and  Florida,  with  headquar¬ 
ters  at  Atlanta,  and  a  total  of  about  six  hundred  and  fifty  chap¬ 
ters  each  with  one  to  twenty  branches.  The  Red  Cross  had 
assumed  certain  responsibilities  to  the  government,  and  these 
could  only  be  fully  discharged  by  every  chapter  carrying  on  and 

(435) 


436 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


doing  its  full  duty.  To  do  our  work  of  supervision  as  it  should 
have  been  done  each  chapter  should  have  been  visited  in  the 
period  succeeding  the  armistice,  at  least  once  a  month  by  a 
highly  competent  field  supervisor  thoroly  versed  in  all  the  intri¬ 
cate  details  of  allotments  and  allowances,  compensations,  insur¬ 
ance,  hospitalization,  junior  Red  Cross,  and  a  hundred  more 
details.  But  it  was  impossible  to  do  this,  we  could  not  find  the 
trained  people  and  we  had  not  the  money  to  pay  them  if  we 
could  have  found  them.  With  an  inadequate  staff,  we  did  the 
best  we  could  and  the  consequence  was  that  many  chapters 
lapsed  which  might  have  been  saved.  The  wonder  was  not  that 
so  many  lapses  took  place  but  that  we  saved  as  many  as  we  did. 
If  it  had  been  important  for  chapters  to  have  trained  executive 
secretaries  in  the  full  flush  of  enthusiasm  during  the  war,  they 
were  much  more  needed  now.  There  was  more  office  work  to  do 
than  ever  and  the  volunteers  no  longer  wanted  to  do  it.  Many 
volunteers  did  keep  on  with  a  magnificent  patriotic  devotion ; 
and  if  we  had  been  able  to  visit  every  chapter  frequently  and 
by  entirely  competent  supervisors,  thousands  more  workers 
might  have  been  kept  in  line. 

Before  the  armistice,  the  home  service  cases  which  involved 
correspondence  with  government  departments,  were  mostly  those 
of  mis-sent  or  unapplied  for  allowances;  these  tho  tedious  were 
comparatively  simple. 

To  find  out  whv  an  allowance  check  did  not  come,  or  whv 
after  it  had  been  coming  for  two  or  three  months,  it  was  discon¬ 
tinued,  often  took  three  or  four  letters  with  wearying  delay. 
When  a  government  department  has  ten  times  as  many  letters 
to  answer  as  its  ill-trained  and  often  politically  appointed  clerks 
have  time  for,  and  when  almost  every  clerk  has  learned  the  para¬ 
mount  importance  of  red  tape,  as  his  or  her  first  lesson  and  the 
gentle  art  of  passing  the  buck  as  the  second,  it  is  no  wonder  that 
enquiries  got  snowed  under  below  a  heap  of  later  papers  and  were 
misplaced  or  lost.  But  even  before  the  boys  came  home  many 
compensation  and  insurance  cases  came  up  and  these  were  hard¬ 
er  to  handle,  the  opportunities  of  fraud  were  greater  and  the  gov¬ 
ernment’s  precaution  to  avoid  it  more  stringent.  Now  we  be¬ 
gan  to  know  what  the  word  “affidavit”  means.  Then  as  the  boys 
began  to  return  and  thousands  of  disabled  ones  wanted  voca- 


As  Director  of  Supervision 


437 


tional  training  and  many  thousands  needed  hospitalization; 
things  got  worse;  the  amount  of  “paper-work”  as  the  army  calls 
it,  became  appalling.  It  was  simply  impossible  for  a  chapter  to 
function  without  a  trained  executive  secretary. 

Some  interesting  work  I  had  to  do  was  with  institutes,  each 
of  six  weeks’  duration,  in  which  we  tried  to  give  new  executive 
secretaries  some  slight  idea  of  their  duties.  Although  six  weeks’ 
instruction  is  only  a  tiny  beginning,  these  were  quite  useful. 
Many  of  our  new  workers,  with  even  this  superficial  training, 
who  had  the  right  back-ground  of  life  and  the  right  social  mind¬ 
edness,  gave  good  account  of  themselves  and  are  today  doing  ex¬ 
cellent  service  some  with  chapters  and  some  in  the  field. 

Early  in  1919  we  were  faced  with  a  serious  emergency  prob¬ 
lem.  Many  chapters  had  almost  ceased  to  function  and  there 
were  hundreds  of  unfinished  cases  requiring  attention.  Many 
of  these  were  enquiries  from  government  departments;  many 
from  chapters  in  other  divisions.  It  was  essential  to  clear  the 
files  of  unanswered  letters  and  I  therefore  sent  field  representa¬ 
tives,  or  as  we  called  them  at  first,  supervisors,  to  inactive  chap¬ 
ters  to  take  hold  of  the  work  precisely  as  tho  they  were  the  execu¬ 
tive  secretaries  of  the  chapter  involved.  By  doing  this  we 
managed  to  relieve  the  Bed  Cross  of  some  of  the  odium  of  falling 
down  on  its  job  with  which  it  was  threatened. 

We  were  slow  to  realize  the  magnitude  of  the  task  we  had  ac¬ 
cepted.  The  number  of  men,  wounded  or  gassed,  and  the  appall¬ 
ing  number  with  shell  shock  or  tuberculosis  grew  rapidly.  In 
1919,  there  were  3,300  hospital  cases,  in  1920,  17,500;  in  1921, 
26,300;  1922,  35,600.  At  first  we  were  warned  that  the  peak  of 
the  number  would  not  be  reached  until  1924 ;  then  1926  was 
named,  and  now  (1922)  we  are  told  that  the  number  will  grow 
until  1928.* 

One  persisting  duty  of  the  Red  Cross  chapters  has  been 
stressed  by  the  army,  it  is  to  furnish  information  to  the  vari¬ 
ous  commands,  when  enlisted  men  ask  for  furloughs  or  dis¬ 
charges  because  of  family  necessities.  Perhaps  no  other  army 
than  that  of  the  U.  S.  has  ever  treated  its  enlisted  men  with  such 
consideration.  When  a  man  has  joined  the  colors  and  then  some 
accident  or  misfortune  befalls  those  he  has  left  behind,  and  he 
applies  for  a  furlough  to  go  to  see  them,  the  application  is  re- 


*It  now  seems  probable  that  this  latest  estimate  is  ill  founded. 


438 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


ferred  to  the  Red  Cross  man  in  camp  who  sends  it  to  the  chapter 
nearest  the  man’s  home  for  verification  and  the  decision  as  to  the 
furlough  or  discharge  is  based  on  the  information  received  just 
as  it  was  while  the  men  were  in  training  camps.  This  service  is 
continuous,  and  is  one  reason  for  the  continuation  of  the  chap¬ 
ters. 

During  1918  and  1919,  every  few  weeks,  new  orders  as  to  pro¬ 
cedure  superceded  those  we  had  just  learned  to  understand,  to 
be  in  turn  themselves  superceded  about  the  time  the  government 
clerks  and  the  Red  Cross  secretaries  understood  them.  The 
Red  Cross  national  headquarters  printed  a  loose  leaf  manual  and 
sent  corrections  as  fast  as  the  new  rules  were  imposed,  but  in 
spite  of  this  the  changes  caused  many  errors  of  form  with  con¬ 
sequent  excruciating  delay.  I  had  thought  I  understood  what 
“red  tape”  means,  but  I  found  myself  almost  childishly  ignorant 
of  its  depth  of  iniquity.  Charles  Dickens’  story  of  the  circumlo¬ 
cution  office  is  a  mild  depiction  of  the  way  many  a  worried  execu¬ 
tive  secretary  of  a  Red  Cross  chapter  feels  about  the  Bureau  of 
War  Risk  Insurance.  This  may  be  an  exaggeration  of  the  facts: 
it  does  not  exaggerate  how  we  came  to  feel  about  them. 

When  the  Veteran’s  Bureau  was  invented  to  supercede  the 
broken  down  War  Risk  Bureau  some  of  the  optimists  among  us 
dared  to  hope  for  some  relief  from  the  weary  burden  of  delay  and 
procrastination.  But  alas!  it  proved  another  case  like  Milton’s 
“New  presbyter  is  but  old  priest  writ  large.” 

The  cases  now  are  most  frequently  of  compensations:  the  ap¬ 
plicants  are  victims  of  shell  shock,  nervous  breakdown,  tuber¬ 
culosis,  and  the  sequelae  of  gassing.  Under  recent  rulings  appli¬ 
cations  of  the  kind  miist  be  supported  by  a  mountain  of  affidavits, 
each  of  which,  if  in  the  opinion  of  an  inspector  it  is  irregular  or 
insufficient:  is  cause  to  pigeonhole  the  case  (and  then  forget  the 
hole)  so  that  letter  after  letter  must  be  written.  I  am  told  that 
an  urgent  telegram  to  one  district  office,  concerning  some  dying 
man  is  rarely  answered  within  several  days  of  its  date:  that  a 
common  answer  after  weeks  of  delay  and  showers  of  letters  of  in¬ 
quiry  is  that  “the  file  cannot  be  found”  so  that  sometimes  the 
whole  weary  work  is  to  do  again.  I  am  glad  to  say  that  not  all 
of  the  districts  of  the  bureau  deserve  this  condemnation.  I  have 
been  told  of  one  of  them  in  which  when  the  chief  gets  an  urgent 


As  Director  of  Supervision 


439 


telegram,  he  hardly  lets  the  message  out  of  his  hands  until  an 
answer  has  been  sent.  But  such  prompt  efficiency,  I  fear, 
is  rare. 

One  of  the  awkward  things  existing  in  the  Southern  division 
when  I  took  charge  of  the  supervision  of  home  service  was  that 
several  other  departments  had  representatives  in  the  field,  work¬ 
ing  independently,  each  calling  on  the  chapters  with  regard  to 
its  own  department  and  ignoring  the  rest.  This  had  bad  effects 
on  the  chapters.  Decentralization  had  not  been  so  hurtful  during 
the  war,  when  everybody  was  as  fully  occupied  in  his  own  spe¬ 
cialty  as  he  could  possibly  be.  But  as  the  work  slowed  down,  it 
became  necessary  to  devolve  on  the  executive  secretary,  many 
things  which  had  been  done  by  different  committees,  and  too 
many  supervisors  are  as  bad  as  too  many  cooks. 

I  conceived  the  idea  of  organizing  the  service  of  my  bureau 
as  an  auxiliary  to  all  the  others.  I  had  the  supervisors  come  to 
headquarters  frequently  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  administra¬ 
tion,  and  when  I  got  them  together,  I  invited  the  heads  of  each 
department  to  meet  with  us  and  tell  us  what  we  could  do  for 
them.  The  spirit  I  tried  to  instill  is  shown  in  a  few  paragraphs 
I  quote  from  a  manual  for  field  supervisors  which  I  compiled  and 
of  which  I  gave  a  copy  to  each:  “The  field  representatives  of 
the  bureau  of  supervision  come  into  more  immediate  and  per¬ 
sonal  contact  with  the  chapters  and  home  service  sections  than 
any  one  else  belonging  to  the  division.  Hence  the  opportunity 
for  usefulness  and  the  need  that  we  be  equipped  to  render  service. 
Our  ambition  is  to  be  helpful  to  every  Bed  Cross  department.7’ 
“Our  supreme  virtue  is  loyalty  to  the  Red  Cross  and  to  our  sis¬ 
ter  bureaus.  We  must  feel  that  Red  Cross  is  one ,  not  a  congeries 
of  unrelated  departments.  We  must  be  meticulously  careful  not 
to  belittle  the  work  of  our  associates  nor  to  allow  it  to  be  belit¬ 
tled  without  a  polite,  tactful,  but  emphatic  protest.77  “In 
all  we  say  and  do,  remember  the  need  for  sincerity,  clearness  of 
purpose,  tact,  courtesy,  and  patience.  The  people  we  are  working 
for  and  with  are  chiefly  volunteers.  They  will  take  advice  on 
methods  if  it  is  given  tactfully  but  we  cannot  expect  them  to 
take  orders.77  “Do  case  work77  with  each  home  service  section. 
Regard  the  home  service  committee  of  a  given  chapter  just  as  you 
have  been  taught  to  regard  a  family  problem.  Think  of  its  per- 


440 


Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


sonnel  as  you  do  of  the  members  of  a  family.  Learn  its  circum¬ 
stances,  its  history,  its  environment;  that  is  to  say  the  commu¬ 
nity  of  which  it  is  a  part;  and  study  all  these  to  see  how  they 
bear  on  its  success  or  failure.  Think  of  chapter  or  commit¬ 
tee  betterment  as  you  do  of  betterment  in  a  family.  Abstain 
from  doing  for  them  what  they  can  and  should  do  for  them¬ 
selves,  just  as  you  abstain  with  a  case,  remembering  that  that 
way  lies  pauperism.  Our  motto  with  the  committees  just  as  with 
a  family,  should  be  “help  them  to  help  themselves.”  “Miss  no 
opportunity  to  encourage  the  development  of  the  volunteer  work, 
If  there  is  a  trained  worker,  make  sure  of  her  attitude  towards 
the  volunteers  and,  if  she  seems  wavering,  remind  her  that  it  is 
her  duty  to  lead,  not  to  do  all  the  work  herself,  even  tho  she 
may  be  able  to  do  it  better  and  more  quickly  than  they  can  or 
will.” 

“While  holding  up  our  standards  of  Red  Cross  work  do  not 
over-emphasize  the  need  of  training  to  the  extent  of  discourag¬ 
ing  the  faithful  volunteer  workers,  who  without  training,  but 
with  fine  spirit  and  devotion,  have  been  and  are  bearing  the  bur¬ 
den  ;  nor  those  who  as  paid  executives  realize  the  value  of  train¬ 
ing  but  by  untoward  circumstances  have  been  deprived  of  it.  It’s 
worth  while  to  remember  that  twenty-five  years  ago  professional 
training  for  social  work  had  not  been  invented.  The  most 
illustrious  of  our  present-day  social  workers  began  as  untrained 
assistants,  or  secretaries.  This  is  no  argument  against  train¬ 
ing  today;  any  more  than  to  say  that  our  grandfathers  had  no 
telephones  would  be  an  argument  against  using  the  wires.  But 
it  may  tend  to  remove  discouragement  and  help  us  to  have  pa¬ 
tience.” 

We  soon  found  that  it  was  impossible  to  reach  more  than 
a  few  of  the  many  chapters  with  competent  representatives  and 
some  scheme  had  to  be  found  to  keep  people  in  line.  A  common 
question  was  “why  does  the  Red  Cross  go  on  now  that  the  war 
is  over?”  People  had  to  be  reminded  that  Red  Cross  did  not  be¬ 
gin  in  1917 ;  of  the  great  work  still  to  do,  its  vast  importance 
and  most  of  all  the  fact  of  our  assumed  obligation  to  Uncle  Sam 
which  we  must  discharge. 

Even  before  the  extension  of  home  service  had  been  permitted, 
I  organized  a  number  of  district  meetings,  gathering  together 


As  Director  of  Supervision 


441 


in  one  place  representatives  of  the  chapters  of  fifteen  or  more 
counties.  At  first  we  called  these  “home  service  conferences”  but 
very  soon  changed  the  name  to  “Red  Cross  District  Conferences” 
and  invited  to  them  the  directors  of  all  the  Red  Cross  depart¬ 
ments  nursing,  production,  junior,  etc.,  to  make  their  appeal. 
Of  these  conferences,  during  1918-1919  we  held  six  in  North  Caro¬ 
lina,  five  in  South  Carolina,  five  in  Georgia,  and  three  in  Tennes¬ 
see.  We  were  able  to  work  up  a  good  deal  of  enthusiasm.  Then 
the  Junior  Red  Cross  was  assuming  proportions  hitherto  unex¬ 
pected.  We  developed  the  idea  that  this  was  no  longer  only  for 
people  across  the  sea,  but  for  the  wonderful  help  of  children  in 
our  own  land.  In  this  we  were  greatly  aided  by  the  Health  Cru¬ 
sade  which  had  done  much  to  popularize  the  idea  of  school  chil¬ 
dren  working  together  for  their  own  benefit,  as  well  as  that  of 
foreigners. 

It  soon  became  evident  that  the  humdrum  routine  work  of 
adjusting  vocational  training,  hospitalization,  compensation,  al¬ 
lotments,  and  allowances,  back  pay,  travel  pay,  and  all  the  rest, 
altho  it  required  steady  patient  work  of  hundreds  of  people, 
would  not  hold  the  chapters  together.  For  that  we  needed  some¬ 
thing  more  spectacular,  something  to  appeal  to  the  emotions. 
The  flu  epidemic  in  November  and  December,  1918,  gave  us  a 
grand  opportunity  and  while  that  lasted,  the  enthusiasm  was 
almost  like  that  of  the  war. 

In  a  thriving  little  city  in  South  Carolina,  the  flu  was  very 
prevalent,  nearly  half  the  people  were  sick;  and  the  other  half 
working  with  the  Red  Cross  were  waiting  on  and  nursing  them. 
Autos  were  busy  carrying  food  and  medicine,  doctors  and  nurses 
were  on  duty  day  and  night,  and  the  work  was  done  so  well 
that  the  death  rate  was  very  low.  When  the  epidemic  abated  the 
manager  of  the  Southern  division  wrote  to  the  chapter  chairman 
a  letter  of  thanks  and  congratulations  on  the  splendid  service 
that  had  been  rendered  and  asked  him  for  the  names  of  eight  or 
ten  of  his  best  workers  to  whom  the  division  might  give  some 
special  mark  of  commendation.  The  chairman  replied,  “I  can¬ 
not  give  you  the  names  of  eight  or  ten,  but  I  can  give  you  the 
names  of  five  hundred.” 

In  many  other  places,  similar  good  work  was  done  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  organized  service  of  the  Red  Cross  during  the 


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great  epidemic  saved  more  lives  than  we  had  lost  in  battle  during 
the  war. 

In  places  where  there  was  no  chapter  nor  similar  service  the 
poor  people  died  like  rotten  sheep.  In  one  hamlet  in  Louisiana 
the  population  was  reduced  by  three-fourths ;  three  times  as  many 
died  as  remained  alive.  No  disease  has  ever  shown  so  clearly 
the  value  of  good  nursing ;  it  was  by  far  more  important  than  the 
work  of  the  doctors. 

The  facts  about  the  epidemic  and  other  considerations  led  di¬ 
rectly  to  the  adoption  of  public  health  nursing  as  a  chief  activity 
of  the  Red  Cross,  and  many  chapters  decided  that,  as  they  could 
not  afford  both,  a  nurse  was  more  important  than  a  trained  so¬ 
cial  worker.  In  a  few  places,  efforts  were  made  to  combine  the 
duties,  but  the  results  were  never  favorable,  and  it  became  ac¬ 
cepted  as  a  positive  rule  that  the  same  worker  could  not  properly 
fill  the  two  distinct  places. 

A  demand  for  trained  health  workers  became  as  insistent  as 
that  for  trained  executives,  not  only  as  local  nurses  but  also  as 
supervisors  of  the  nursing  service.  Then  came  conflicts,  misun¬ 
derstandings,  sometimes  jealousies,  between  the  two  sets  of  su¬ 
pervisors. 

Some  of  the  states  in  the  division  had  active  boards  of 
health  and  it  was  necessary  to  find  some  basis  of  co-operation 
with  them.  The  medical  officers  of  the  state  naturally  enough 
felt  that  they  ought  to  be  supreme  in  all  health  matters.  They 
were  quite  ready  to  take  over  the  Red  Cross  nurses  at  the  ex¬ 
pense  of  the  Red  Cross;  and  then  thought  they  should  have  full 
control  of  them  and  even  resented  the  chapter  requiring  its  own 
nurses  whom  it  paid  to  report  to  it. 

I  suppose  similar  difficulties  arose  in  other  divisions.  They 
needed  careful  and  tactful  handling  everywhere.  Fortunately 
we  had  in  our  Southern  division  a  chief  of  the  nursing  staff  in 
Jane  Van  de  Vrede,  a  woman  of  rare  ability  and  fine  qualities  of 
head  and  heart,  unselfish,  devoted  and  wise,  so  that  our  con¬ 
flicts  were  overcome  with  the  minimum  of  harm.  Still  there  were 
some  cases  in  which  chapters  were  wrecked  in  spite  of  all  our 
field  representatives  could  do  because  all  their  energies  were  ab¬ 
sorbed  in  the  nursing  service  and  that  was  taken  over  by  the 
state  health  authorities. 


THE  GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 


Chapter  Three 

Even  before  the  armistice,  people  began  appealing  to  Red 
Cross  chapters  for  home  service  and  relief  for  civilian  families 
who  had  not  had  a  member  in  the  army.  Under  the  charter  as 
it  was  then  interpreted,  these  requests  had  to  be  denied.  Our 
home  service  was  exclusively  for  service  men  and  their  families. 
Then  came  the  question  how  soon  after  a  man  is  discharged,  does 
the  family  become  a  civilian  one?  And  the  answer  at  first  was 
six  months,  and  later,  one  year. 

But  when  we  had  been  doing  home  service  for  a  family  it 
was  hard  to  stop  unless  the  need  was  all  met,  merely  because 
we  had  reached  a  time  limit.  And  then  other  considerations 
came  in.  Very  early  in  its  history,  the  Red  Cross  had  extended 
itself  from  its  first  clear  purpose ;  the  help  of  soldiers  in  time  of 
war ;  to  help  of  civilians  in  great  disasters  during  peace.  The  be¬ 
ginning  of  a  nation-wide  health  campaign  had  been  another  exten¬ 
sion.  Home  service  for  the  families  of  soldiers;  which  came 
with  our  entry  into  the  great  war  in  April,  1917,  was  a  third. 
Was  it  not  possible  to  make  another  great  extension,  that  of  home 
service  to  civilian  families?  Might  this  not  be  a  final  develop¬ 
ment  of  great  value? 

In  one  city  where  a  strong  chapter  existed,  there  was  a  fair¬ 
ly  well  conducted  Associated  Charities.  Before  the  war  this 
had  a  list  of  families  getting  help  or  service  of  some  kind,  num¬ 
bering  about  eleven  hundred.  As  the  Red  Cross  home  service 
developed  it  was  found  that  nearly  one  thousand  of  these  fami¬ 
lies  had  such  connection  with  the  army  that  they  belonged  to 
the  Red  Cross.  The  citizens  and  the  Associated  Charities  said : 
“The  chapter  has  taken  so  many,  why  not  take  the  few  remain¬ 
ing,  why  continue  two  similar  agencies  in  the  same  city  ?  Why  not 
save  overhead  and  avoid  duplication  by  uniting?” 


(443) 


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The  day  after  the  armistice  when  we  began  to  ask  ourselves, 
“Where  do  we  come  in,  now?”  the  first  glimpse  of  hope  for  a  real 
future  came,  when  we  thought  we  saw  an  opportunity  to  extend 
the  realm  of  social  work  beyond  the  farthest  bounds  of  the  im¬ 
agination  of  the  National  Society  for  the  Organization  of  Char¬ 
ity.  We  said  why  cannot  we  make  of  most,  or  many,  or  even  a 
chosen  few,  of  the  Red  Cross  chapters,  centers  of  associated 
knowledge  and  effort  which  shall  be  what  we  used  to  dream  of, 
when  we  began  scientific  organized  charity  in  the  eighteen-eight¬ 
ies.  We  had  the  idea  of  service  more  clearly  defined  and 
less  hampered  by  relief  than  it  had  ever  been  before,  except  to 
a  small  group  of  the  elect.  We  had  a  wonderful  nucleus  in  each 
chapter;  a  band  of  people  whose  emotions  for  social  welfare  had 
been  stirred  in  common ;  who  had  enjoyed  as  never  before  doing 
things  for  others  in  company.  If  we  could  only  guide  these  emo¬ 
tions  and  enjoyments  aright ;  if  we  could  only  get  the  nuclei  to  see 
the  opportunity;  might  not  part  of  the  salvage  from  the  awful 
wreck  of  war  be  a  better  social  order?  Not  only  in  a  few  great 
cities,  where  the  sense  of  responsibility  of  the  privileged  for  the 
welfare  of  the  less  fortunate  had  been  preached  for  many  years 
and  sometimes  with  a  little  success ;  but  in  the  thousands  of  small 
towns  and  villages  and  even  in  the  rural  districts  among  our 
twenty  thousand  or  more  chapters,  branches,  and  auxiliaries  ? 

It’s  true  that  many  of  our  leaders  did  not  see  what  we  thought 
we  saw.  But  some  of  them  did  and  still  do.  While  they  missed 
the  great  opportunity  there  are  many  small  ones  remaining. 

The  question  of  extended  home  service  was  taken  up  in  sev¬ 
eral  of  the  divisions.  Many,  altho  not  all,  of  the  social  workers, 
who  had  been  drafted  into  work  for  the  chapters  from  the  ranks 
of  organized  charity  were  for  it.  Pressure  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  central  council  in  its  favor.  I  wrote  a  letter  to  a  friend 
who  was  connected  with  military  relief  in  which  I  put  the  argu¬ 
ment  given  above  as  strongly  as  I  could  and  he  presented  it  to 
one  of  the  higher-ups  who  carried  it  to  Washington  and  my  friend 
said  it  had  some  effect.  With  much  hesitation  it  was  ruled  that 
chapters  might  be  allowed  to  extend  their  home  service  under 
certain  conditions  ;  such  as  assurance  against  neglect  of  our 
present  obligation  to  the  government;  against  competition  with 
existing  benevolent  organizations;  against  temporary  and  spas- 


The  Great  Opportunity 


445 


modic  efforts ;  assurance  of  well  trained  service  and  a  high  stand¬ 
ard  of  work;  and  other  safeguards,  and  many  chapters  under¬ 
took  the  extension  and  are  now  carrying  it  on. 

Now  the  fatal  weakness  in  each  succeeding  method  of  social 
welfare  work  for  families  which  has  spoiled  them  all,  one  after 
the  other  in  their  turn,  has  been  that  it  has  always,  or  nearly  al¬ 
ways,  seemed  necessary  to  accompany,  or  prepare  for,  service  by 
some  measure  of  relief ;  and  service  being  often  difficult  and 
relief  easy,  the  easy  thing  has  been  done,  and  the  difficult  one 
postponed ;  until  the  fine  theories  of  human  betterment  with 
which  every  one  of  the  successive  methods  began;  were  first  ob¬ 
scured  and  then  forgotten.  Could  we  hope  that  Red  Cross  might 
escape  this  danger?  There  was  one  factor  that  seemed  favor¬ 
able.  Red  Cross  work  was  not  confined  to,  nor  chiefly  for,  “the 
poor.”  It  belonged  to  all  in  the  service.  It  was  far  removed 
from  old-fashioned  “charity.”  So  we  felt  and  preached,  that  the 
function  of  a  chapter  with  extended  home  service  was  not  to  be 
just  one  more — nor  just  one — relief  organization.  It  was  to  be  a 
center  of  social  effort.  It  was  as  much  concerned  with  the  pro¬ 
motion  of  joy  as  with  the  assuagement  of  sorrow  ;  as  much  inter¬ 
ested  in  the  life  of  the  industrious,  self-respecting  workman  and 
workwoman  as  in  that  of  the  derelict,  the  broken-down,  the  de¬ 
pendent  or  would-be  dependent.  It  should  believe  and  teach  that 
health  is  better  than  sickness  and  equally  contagious;  that  the 
school  boy  has  as  much  worry  when  his  tonsils  are  affected,  if 
he  is  the  son  of  the  village  postmaster,  as  he  has  when  he  is  the 
child  of  the  village  loafer  ;  that  souls  suffer  from  hunger  as  much 
or  more  than  stomachs;  that  hyacinths  may  be  more  necessary 
than  bread ;  that  it  is  as  much  our  function  as  Red  Crossers  to 
recognize  the  disaster  of  being  a  community  of  dull,  stolid,  joy¬ 
less  people ;  as  the  disaster  of  a  fire,  a  flood,  or  a  tornado. 

Our  approach  to  the  chapters  with  our  new  message,  was 
partly  in  print,  but  chiefly  by  means  of  the  representatives  we 
sent  to  visit  them,  and  my  job  was  the  direction  of  these  field 
workers  in  their  dealings  with  the  chapters  and  particularly 
with  the  executive  secretaries.  Those  in  the  field  had  the  heavy 
end  of  the  job.  We  urged  them  to  approach  their  work  in  the 
spirit  above  expressed  and  slowly  and  cautiously  win  the  mem¬ 
bers  one  by  one,  man  by  man  and  woman  by  woman  to  our 


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theory.  We  told  them  the  most  important  text  for  leaders 
in  the  New  Testament  is  Mathew  xx  :27,  “and  whosoever  will  be 
chief  among  you,  let  him  be  your  servant,”  that  the  chapter 
can  be  chief  if  it  will  be  the  servant  of  all  and  in  no  other  way. 
The  executive  secretary  must  be  the  eye  and  the  brain  of  the 
socialized  community.  Not  the  tongue,  she  must  do  some  talk¬ 
ing,  but  if  she  is  shrewd  she  will  find  some,  preacher  or  lawyer 
or  even  a  decent  politician,  to  do  most  of  that  for  her;  not  the 
hand,  or  not  the  only  hand;  not  the  heart,  there’s  plenty  of 
heart  stuff  ready  if  she  has  the  wit  to  find  it.  But  she  must  see 
more,  and  see  more  clearly;  she  must  know  more  of  every  possi¬ 
ble  sourse  of  help,  of  joy,  of  opportunity;  than  anyone  else;  not 
because  she  is  smarter  than  the  rest,  but  because  it  is  her  job 
and  she  is  on  to  it. 

And  many  of  our  devoted  workers  responded  nobly.  I  have 
seen  an  executive  secretary  go  into  a  town  where  the  chapter 
doubted  she  was  needed,  and  in  her  first  week  find  two  deaf- 
mutes  and  a  blind  child  growing  up  in  deafness  and  blindness 
without  education  because  neither  the  parents  nor  the  Ladies’  Aid 
Society,  which  was  giving  them  relief  knew  how  to  apply  to  the 
state  schools. 

And  what  the  executive  secretary  is  to  her  chapter,  the  field 
representative  is  to  her  group  of  chapters.  I  have  known  of  a 
field  representative  going  into  a  mill  village  and  finding  out  that 
the  model  cottages,  provided  by  the  benevolent,  socialized,  pater¬ 
nalistic  mill-owners,  were  supplied  with  water  from  wells  into 
which  horrible  contagion  inevitably  drained  and  caused  typhoid ; 
which  a  mysterious  Providence,  for  some  inscrutable  reason,  per¬ 
mitted  to  afflict  the  poor  people,  whom  the  pious,  piously  re¬ 
signed,  were  so  sorry  for.  I  told  them  when  they  found  such  pious 
resignation  to  preach  from  another  favorite  text  of  mine : 
Mathew  xxiii  :v.l4,  “It  is  not  the  will  of  your  Father  which  is  in 
Heaven,  that  one  of  these  little  ones  perish” — that  the  value 
in  such  instruction  of  Scriptural  over  sociological  texts,  in  the 
average  professed  God-fearing  community,  is  that  they  dare  not 
deny  their  authenticity,  even  tho  sometimes,  when  it  hurts,  they 
question  their  application. 

Many  chapters  applied  for  and  were  granted  home  service 
extension,  a  few  of  them  in  the  spirit  outlined  above  (tho  I 


The  Great  Opportunity 


447 


must  confess  that  these  were  few)  and  are  now  carrying  on  with 
marked  success.  A  few  began  and  dropped  it;  a  few  lapsed  al¬ 
most  from  the  first  into  crude  almsgiving.  But  where  it  has 
been  faithfully  tried,  with  a  trained,  efficient  social  worker  as 
executive  secretary,  it  is  going  well. 

In  August,  1919,  I  was  urgently  requested  to  help  some  people 
in  New  Orleans  to  organize  a  much  needed  institution  for  the 
feeble-minded.  I  had  got  them  started  about  the  little  school 
and  done  a  lot  of  talking  for  them.  Now  they  were  ready  to 
begin  and  needed  some  old  experienced  hand  to  get  things  going. 
It  seemed  a  call  I  could  hardly  refuse  and  I  spent  a  few  months 
getting  the  institution  fairly  under  way,  and  it  is  now  run¬ 
ning  successfully.  But  in  doing  this,  and  also  keeping  up  some 
Red  Cross  activities  and  a  few  other  responsibilities  which  I 
did  not  succeed  in  evading,  I  broke  down  in  health  and,  in 
March,  1920,  being  in  a  condition  approaching  nervous  collapse, 
I  was  told  by  my  physician  that  I  must  either  give  up  work  at 
once  and  rest  for  six  months  or  perhaps  a  year,  or  go  on  for 
a  very  short  time  longer  and  then  give  up  altogether.  I  chose 
the  milder  alternative  and  rested  until  the  end  of  the  year. 

With  six  months’  complete  rest  and  freedom  from  responsi¬ 
bility,  I  got  back  to  health  and  vigor,  and  beginning  in  January, 
1921,  I  resumed  Red  Cross  work  with  the  Gulf  division  in  a 
new  character,  that  of  Staff  Representative,  my  work  being 
merely  lecturing  and  teaching.  This  at  first  was  in  the  three 
states  of  the  Gulf  division,  Louisiana,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi, 
but  in  April  when  the  divisions  were  united,  and  the  headquar¬ 
ters  moved  to  Atlanta,  I  went  with  it,  doing  the  work  I  most  en¬ 
joy,  and  am,  perhaps,  best  fit  for.  So  my  last  adventure  in  social 
welfare  (perhaps  I  ought  to  say  my  latest)  was  very  nearly  re¬ 
lated  to  my  first,  for  the  home  service  of  the  Red  Cross,  which 
was  the  principal,  tho  not  the  only  theme  of  my  lectures,  is  in 
a  high  degree  that  family  welfare  work  which  I  first  tried  to 
do  in  Cincinnati  forty  years  earlier. 

I  traveled  extensively  from  Virginia  to  Louisiana  and  all  the 
states  between  speaking  to  the  public  in  churches,  giving  courses 
of  lectures  on  social  work  at  colleges  and  summer  schools  and 
discussing  all  the  departments  of  the  Red  Cross. 


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Adventures  with  the  Red  Cross 


As  I  went  from  chapter  to  chapter  to  talk  to  the  grown-ups 
I  visited  the  schools  and  talked  to  the  children  about  the  junior 
Red  Cross,  etc.  It  was  a  frequent  pleasant  incident,  on  the 
day  following  a  trip  thru  two  or  three  school-houses,  where 
I  had  talked  to  four  or  five  classes  in  each,  to  have  school  chil¬ 
dren  accost  me  by  name  on  the  street  and  ask  me  when  I  was 
coming  to  tell  them  some  more  stories. 

As  time  went  on  many  changes  in  the  organization  were  need¬ 
ed.  The  successive  roll-calls  inevitably  showed  a  smaller  num¬ 
ber  of  members  and  I  felt  that  the  division  should  not  be  burdened 
by  paying  even  the  modest  salary  I  needed.  Tho  the  manager  of 
the  division  seemed  to  wish  to  keep  me,  I  resigned  to  take  effect 
July  31st,  1922;  thus  bringing  to  a  close,  forty  years  of  social 
work,  and  setting  me  free  to  live  wherever  I  chose,  and  to  write 
my  book,  which  I  had  long  had  a  mind  to  do.  And  because  there’s 
no  better  state  than  Indiana,  and  no  more  hearty,  wholesome, 
kindly,  human  people  than  the  Hoosiers,  I  settled  in  my  adopted 
state,  at  Fort  Wayne,  hoping  for  the  rest  of  my  life  to  help  when 
I  may  as  a  volunteer  once  more;  for  whoso  once  fairly  begins 
in  social  work  will  surely  continue  in  it  as  long  as  life  and 
strength  shall  last. 


INDEX 

of  People  Mentioned 


Page 

Addams,  Jane . 278,  325, 329 

351,  352,  374,  382 

Allen,  W.  H . 374 

Almy,  Frederic . 46,57 

American,  Sadie . 357 

Armstrong,  Gen.  S.  C . 291 

Arnold,  Mathew . 89,300 

Aschrott,  Dr.  ( Prussia ) .  88 

Auerbach,  Murray..- . 400 

Ayres,  Philip  W . 372 

Bagley,  Gov.  (Mich.) . 312 

Barnard,  Kate . 342 

Barrows,  Isabel  C . 308,318 

Barrows,  Samuel  J . 342,  374 

Ba  r ton ,  Clara . 290 

Battershall,  Miss . 228 

Bicknell,  Ernest  P . 78,83,102 

133, 146, 155, 163, 168, 169 
244,  313,  358 

Bijur,  Nathan . 331 

Birtwell,  Charles  W . 153,374 

Blake,  James  Vila .  90 

Blinn,  Dr.  Odelia .  72 

Brace,  Charles  Loring . 374 

Brackett,  Jeffrey  R . . .  .320,  323,  326 

Brooks,  John  Graham . 374 

Brown,  Waldo .  41 

Bryce,  Lord . 374 

Burns,  Allen  T . 278 

Busch,  Prof.  (Hamburgh) . 48 

Butler,  Amos  W. .  .133, 161, 162, 163 

235,  328,  341,  347 

Butler,  Edmond .  47 

Byers,  Albert  G . 295,  297 

Byers,  Joseph  P . 324,327,396 


Cabot,  Dr.  Richard  C .  3 

Choate,  Joseph . 320,321 

Christian,  King  (Denmark) ...  .355 

Corrigan,  Archbishop . 320 

Craig,  Rev.  S.  S . 318 

Crothers,  Rev.  Samuel  McC . 359 

Cushing,  Joseph . 295 

Cutting,  Bayard . 396,417 

Dawes,  Anna  L . 316 

deForest,  Robert  W . 316,325 

338,372 

449 


Page 

Denison,  Edward .  53 

Devine,  Edwin  T . 7,51,316,327 

328,  331,  336,  337,  339,  371 

372,  373 

Dewey,  Dr.  Richard . 316 

Donaldson,  Parker . 38 

Durbin,  Winfield  T _ 261,262,263 

264,  324 

Elder,  Archbishop .  19 

Elder,  John  R . 82,84,106,165 

298  299 

Eliot,  Pres.  Charles  W .  7 

Eliot,  Rev.  T.  L . 293,294 

Elmore,  Andrew . 276,  277,  302 

Emerson,  R.  W .  9 

Emery,  L.  S . 41,42 

Fairchild,  Charles  S . 283,  366 

Fairbanks,  Mrs.  C.  W . 84,  309 

Fernald,  W.  E . 211 

Fletcher,  Miss  Alice . 291 

Findlay,  John  H . 85,86 

Fish,  Dr.  Wm.  B . 299 

Folks,  Homer . 316,  324,  328,  377 

Fortune,  William . 101 

Fulcomer,  Daniel . 308 

Gage,  Lyman .  67 

Garrison,  Wm.  Lloyd . 318 

Gavit,  John  P . 380 

George,  Henry . 317 

Gerry,  Bishop  (S.  C.) . 405 

Gibbons,  Cardinal . 297 

Gillespie,  Bishop  G.  D . 291 

Gillin,  J.  L .  7 

Glenn,  John . 292 

Glenn,  John  M . 295,297,322 

Goddard,  H.  H . 392 

Gordon,  Jean  M . 402 

Greenmail,  Dr . 396 

Gundry,  Dr.  Richard . 290 

Gurteen,  Rev.  S.  H . 48,59 

Hackett,  E.  A.  K. .  .174, 175, 198,  264 

Hall,  G.  Stanley . 182,380 

Hall,  Bolton . 318 

Hanley,  Gov.  (Ind.) . 100,163 

Hanna,  H.  H . 298,348 


450 


Index 


Page 

Harriman,  Mrs.  E.  H . 393 

Hart,  Hastings  H . 85,86,271 

281,  302,  305,  319,  324,  342 

374,  399 

Henderson,  Charles  R - 8,322,  384 

Heyman,  Michel . 313 

Hill,  Helen  F . 405 

Hitchcock,  Jane  E . 331 

Hoadly,  Gov.  (Ohio) . 289 

Hoffman,  Frederic  L . 325 

Hovey,  Gov.  (Ind.) . 87,89,92 

Hoyt,  Charles  S . 85,86 

Ireland,  Archbishop . 289 

Ireland,  Mrs.  Geo.  F . 39,40,41 


Page 

Mathews,  Gov.  Claude  (Ind.).. 168 
173, 174,  245,  256,  257 

Miller,  Dr.  Alexander . 374 

Montgomery,  Louise . 331 

Morgan.  “Blinky”  (burglar)  ...  .128 

Morss,  Sami.  R .  94 

Mount,  Gov.  James  A . 257,258 

259,  260.  261 

Mulry,  Thos.  M . 328,  344 

Munsterburg,  Emil . 17,  357,  374 

Murphy,  Edgar  Gardner ....  325,  326 

Neff,  Peter  Rudolph . 36,  44 

Nicholson,  Timothy . 84.  99.  292 

323,  324 


Johnson,  Mrs.  Alexander ...  190, 191 

200,  228,  241 

Johnstone,  Albert  Sydney . 404 

Johnstone,  Edward  R.  .181, 187, 188 

392,396,  416 

Jones,  Rev.  M.  Ashby . 345 


Keene,  Dr.  George . 311 

Kelley,  Florence . 312,  325,  353 

Kellogg,  Charles  D . 290 

Kellogg,  Paul  TJ . 353 

Kelsey,  Carl . 372 

Kennedy,  John  S . 320,372.378 

King,  Henry  W  (convict) .  .118, 119 

Kingsley,  Sherman .  78 

Kloman,  Dr.  (Baltimore) . 288 

Lamb,  Charles .  56 

Lathrop,  Julia  C. .  .278,  308.  309.  312 

382 

Lattimore,  Florence . 358 

Lee,  Bill  (convict) . 124 

Lee,  Jim  (convict) . 124 

LeGalley,  Dr . 254 

Letchworth,  Wm.  P . 281.282 

Lincoln,  Mrs.  Alice . 148 

Lindsey,  Judge  Ben . 339 

Loch,  Charles  S . 357 

Logan,  Joseph  C . 422 

Loubet,  Ex-Pres.  (France) . 355 

Lovejoy,  Owen  R . 353 

Low,  Seth . 319,321 


McCulloch,  Oscar  Carlton.  .81,  84,  86 
141,  285,  292,  296,  297,  299 
300,  301,  303 


McKelway,  A.  .T . 345 

Mack,  Julian  W . 328,363,364 

Martindale,  E.  B . 82,84 

Mastin.  .T.  T . 167,347,406 


O’Reilly,  John  Boyle .  56 

Paine,  Robert  Treat _ 53,307,314 

Palmer,  Gov.  (Ill.) .  85 

Patten,  Jim . 121,123,126 

Patten,  Simon  N . 374 

Peabody,  George  Foster . 345 

Peelle,  Mrs.  Margaret  F .  84 

Phillips,  Wendell .  15 

Plunket,  Sir  Horace . 374 

i 

Reed,  Myron . 103,  299,  300.  301 

302,  303 

Reichelderfer.  Joseph . 214 

Rich,  Gov.  (Mich.) . 312 

Richmond,  Mary  E . 7,54,316 

Robins,  Raymond . 341 

Rogers,  Dr.  Joseph  G . 88,103 

Rogers,  Dr.  (Minn.) . 254 

Rosenau,  Nathaniel  S . 70,285 

287,  288,  306,  308,  309 

Sanborn,  Frank  B . 270,291,311 

320,  362,  363,  365 

Smith,  Hoke . 325,326 

Smith,  Dr.  Samuel  E _ 95,96,108 

132 

Smith,  Samuel  G . 322,328,329 

332  333 

Smith,  Zilpha  Drew . 54.55,56 

281,  283,  284,  285,  322 

Solenberger,  Edwin  D . 3 

Sonneschein,  Rabbi . 290 

Spalding.  Bishop . . 324 

Spann,  John  M . 256,264 

Spencer,  Anna  G a rlin.  .306,373,  374 

384 

Speranza,  Gino . 374 

Steele,  H.  Wirt . 347.353 

Stettinius,  John  L . 30.37,39 


INDEX 


451 


Page 

Stewart,  Wm.  Rhinelander. .  319,  321 
Swanson,  Gov.  (Va.) . 347 

Tachau,  E.  S . 403 

Taylor,  Graham.. .  .278,  371,  374,  379 
380,  381,  382,  383,  384 

Taylor,  Graham  Romeyn . 381 

Taylor,  Katharine . 381 

Taylor,  Leah . , . 381 

Trusdell,  Charles  G. .  .61,  77,  78,  286 

287 

Tucker,  Frank . 329,365 

Von  Yoght,  Casper . 48 


Page 

Walk,  James  W . 130,285,287 

Warner,  A.  G . 7,8,376 

Wayland,  Rev.  Dr .  70 

Wayland,  Judge  Francis . 310 

Wendte,  Rev.  Charles  W . 13,21 

West,  Mary  Allen .  74 

Whipple,  Bishop . 289 

Whipple,  Durand . 400,401 

Wilmer,  Rev.  C.  B . 325 

Wines,  Frederick  Howard. ..  .85,  86 

98, 130,  302 

Wise,  Rabbi  Stephen  S . 330,351 

Woods,  Robert  W . 278 

Wright,  Dr.  Charles  E.  .95, 109, 113 
Wright,  A.  0 . 311,312 


Topical 


Page 

After-care  of  insane. .  .316, 377, 378 

Aftermath  of  disaster .  25 

Aged  poor,  care  of .  35 

Alms,  degrading  and  hurtful. ...  33 

53,  57 

Almshouse,  The  . 140 

American  Assn,  for  Org.  Fam. 

Soc.  Work .  55 

American  Assn,  of  Soc.  Wkrs...  7 
American  Charities  (Warner) . .  8 

50 

American  Prison  Assn . 307 

American  Red  Cross,  Adven¬ 
tures  with  . 290,  419 

boys  in  camp,  with . 421 

Bureau  of  War  Risk  Ins . 426 

434,  438 

Camp  Greene,  N.  C . 422 

circumlocution  office . 438 

conferences  of  R.  C.  in  South¬ 
ern  Div . 441 

extended  home  service . 444 

flu  epidemic  and  R.  C . 441 

institutes  for  training  execu¬ 
tive  secretaries . 437 

Junior  Red  Cross . 441 

morale  officer  Camp  Greene.. 433 

passing  the  buck . 433 

red  tape  triumphant . 427,433 

436,  438 

Southern  div.  A.  R.  C . 435 

supervision,  direction  of . 435 

supervisors  doing  case  work 

with  their  chapters . 440 

Veteran’s  Bureau,  the . 438 

Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  R.  C.  in  camp. 423 
American  Soc.  Sci.  Assn . 270 


Page 

Apostle  or  deacon . 344,  391 

Art  of  social  work .  8 

Asiatic  immigration . 331 

Assd.  Char,  meaning  of  term _ 23 

Assd.  Char,  reputation  of .  31 

A.  I.  C.  P.  in  diff .  cities . 24,  48 

Asthenontology,  Sci.  of . 130 

Asylums  for  poor,  names  of....  137 
social  classification  in . 147 

Birth  control,  German  view....  18 

Blue  Ridge  Assn.  N.  C . 385 

summer  school  at . 421 

Bds.  of  St.  Char.  vs.  Bds.  of 

Control  .  92 

Boston,  Assd.  Charities  of _ 21,53 

Buffalo,  C.  O.  S.  of . 21,  48 

By-products  of  philanthropy ....  146 


Calamity  relief  liberal .  33 

Charity,  feared  and  hated  by 

decent  poor  . 5,  41 

Charity  trust,  A .  76 

Chicago  C.  O.  S.  beginning  of...  59 

loud  call  from .  44 

making  good . 63 

publicity  stunts  of . 68 

Relief  and  Aid  Soc.  and _ 59,60 

77,  286 

its  board . •  62 

triumvirate  who  ruled  it.  .62,  76 

77 

county  out-door  relief  in _ 71 

fire  relief,  results  of . 32,60 

Child  labor  in  the  South . 325 

Childn.  Aid  Soc.  of  N.  Y . 154 

chldn.  taken  to  Ind.  by . 154 


452 


Index 


Page 

Children’s  Bd.  of  Guardians ....  82 


Children  of  strikers  fed .  4 

Church  and  King  mob .  6 

Churches  weakened  by  gifts  of 

millionaires  .  33 

Cincinnati  Assd.  Char .  13 

org.  of  by  districts .  13 

salaries  of  agents .  23 

saving  money  expected . 21 

Cincinnati,  early  history .  16 

in  the  eighties .  14 

poor  whites  and  shanty  boat 

folks  .  20 

negroes,  former  slaves .  20 

slavery  days,  underground 

R.  R .  15 

pro-slavery  sentiment .  15 


Cincinnati,  German  influence...  17 
child  labor  19,  personal  lib¬ 
erty  19,  opinions  on  “puri 
tans”  18,  thrifty  but  pleasure 
loving  17,  “over  the  Rhine”17 
Cincinnati,  floods  in  Ohio  valley 


1883  24,  1884  25 

flood  relief,  the  great .  25 

central  committee . 24,  25 

city’s  contribution .  27 

clothing  from  afar .  29 

contribs.  to  A.  C .  29 


derelicts,  human  flood  of . . .  28 
repg.  and  replacing  homes . .  31 
results  of  flood  on  A.  C . . .  25,  27 

33 

Cincinnati  today,  A.  C.  highly 
org.  million  dollar  funds, 
social  unit  experiments ...  44 
Columbian  exposition  in  Chicago.305 
Common  schools  of  vice,  jails  as 

104, 127 

Concentration  vs.  association  of 

charities  .  52 

Conference,  The  National ...  36,  267 
American  plan  hotel  for  head¬ 
quarters  preferred  . 282 

associated  societies,  the . 360 

limitation  of . 361 

commercial  orgs.  cooperating.. 364 

cumulative  index,  the . 333 

democracy  of . 273,  323 

effects  of,  on  a  city . 295 

eras,  three,  of  the . 365 

finances  of  the . 347 

first  attendance,  my . 36,281 

get-together  dinner,  Phila _ 336 

Guide  and  Index,  The ....  333, 334 

hegemony  of  the . 367 

meetings  of,  Atlanta  47,  325, 


Page 

Baltimore  295,  Boston  359, 
Buffalo  350,  Chicago  305, 
Cincinnati  322,  Cleveland 
362,  Denver  302,  Gd.  Rapids 
278,  311,  Minneapolis  340, 
Nashville  307,  New  Orleans 
313,  Omaha  290,  Philadel¬ 
phia  335,  Portland,  Me., 

326,  Portland,  Ore.,  329, 
Richmond  344,  St.  Paul  56, 

288,  St.  Louis  281,  352,  San 
Francisco  291,  Topeka  321, 
Toronto  313,  Washington 
284,  322,  New  Haven,  310 
name  changed  to  Conf.  of  Soc. 

Wk . 364 

platforms  not  adopted  by.... 354 

sectionalism,  dreaded . 278 

sermons,  by  distd  preachers.  .323 
singing,  congregational,  at.... 298 
sociability,  lack  of,  at  times. .  .282 
standing  corns,  of,  work  of 


compiling  . 275 

stormy  petrels  of,  few . 272 

unwritten  (customary)  law.. 270 

271 

vice  president,  a,  ruled  out  of 

the  succession . 337 

Conferences,  State . 157 

Conference,  the  spirit  of . 276 

Conflicts  in  cities,  N.  Y.,  Chi¬ 
cago,  Cincinnati,  St.  Louis, 

etc . 49 

Conquest  of  poverty  (Almy) ....  57 

Copenhagen,  slumless  city . 358 

Cotton  famine  in  Lancashire...  5 

Council,  The  .  70 

Council  of  Char.  Offrs.,  The.  .56,289 

Decadence  of  char,  societies ....  24 
Declaration  of  dependence,  chil¬ 
dren’s  . 345 

Degradation  of  char,  energy _ 50 

Democratic  spirit,  The . 200 

Deps.  Defs.  Dels.  (Henderson) .  .376 
Devel.  from  char.  agt.  to  soc. 

worker  . 366 

Dole  relief,  evils  of .  46 

Elberfeld  system,  the . 48 

Endowments,  evils  of .  33 

Family  welfare  work  in  80's. ...  45 

conflicting  agencies .  47 

enthusiasm  of  early  days . 45 

friendly  visiting . 34,53 

homes,  to  save  or  restore .  47 


Index 


453 


Page 

help  to  self-help,  only  kind _ 54 

night  office  hours,  in  Cinti. ...  43 

in  Chicago . 64 

provident  plans,  coal  funds, 

etc . 42,  43 

Feeble-Minded,  Adventures  with. 171 
adult  females,  commitment  of. 218 

employment  of  . 226 

The  Moated  Grange  (dream) 

229 

amusements  for  f.  m . 188 

birthday  parties . 190 

camping  out  on  farm . 189 

comic  operas  . 192, 194 

being  investigated  . 238 

Colonia,  farm,  boon  to  the 

supt.  profitable  to  state. .  .211 
fruit  growing  as  industry. .  .215 
lumbering  and  brick  mak¬ 


ing  . 215 

construction,  Harper  lodge.... 226 

Sunset  cottage  . 223 

housing  at  Colonia . 230 

doctors  and  medicine . 246 

autopsies  . 246 

cretinism  and  the  thyroid.. 252 
epidemics,  diphtheria,  scar¬ 
let  fever  and  measles . 250 

making  friends  with  the 
medical  school. .  .248,  249,  253 

dentistry,  dental  interne . 254 

education  of  the  f.  m . 180 

encouragement  the  spirit . . .  182 

employees,  meetings  of . 205 

attendants  and  teachers ....  201 
employment  of  children,  Sun¬ 
set  sisters  and  imbecile 
helpers  . 223 


berry  picking,  event  of  joy.  .234 
f.  m.  labor  and  the  unions.. 219 
happiness  the  prime  requisite.  58 

188 

institution  method  and  spirit.. 203 


corporal  punishment . 206 

elopements  (runaway)  . 206 

matron  and  homelikeness ...  200 
New  Orleans  school  begun.... 447 

nutrition  experiments  . 232 

Sunday  School,  the . 190 

training  in  usefulness,  and 
permament  control  the  es¬ 
sentials  . 177 

Federation  of  soc.  agencies . 44 

Firvale  union,  Sheffield,  Engd..l48 

Florence  Crittenden  Homes . 361 

Fresh  air  for  children,  Chicago..  71 
Daily  News  fresh  air  fund. ...  72 


Page 

Castle  Content . 73,74 

Fresh  air  for  chldn,  Cincinnati..  37 

Mount  Healthy,  farms  at . 40 

New  Richmond  &  Clermont  Co.  38 
Oxford  &  Butler  Co .  41 

Giving  in  the  eighties  and  now.  .39 

Governors  as  best  friends . 256 

Governor  as  severe  critic . 261 

Greed  as  a  cause  of  poverty ....  51 

Hamburgh  in  1788 . 48,60 

Heredity  of  feeble-mindedness 

and  pauperism  . 133 

Home  coming  from  Europe . 359 

Home  for  self-supporting  wom¬ 
en  in  Chicago .  57 

Hoosier  character,  friendliness 

of  . 165 

Hull  House,  Chicago . 278 

Illinois  Board  of  Charities .  83 

Impressions  of  early  childhood..  4 
Indictment  of  char,  agencies  in 
Pres.  add.  at  Conf  (De- 

vine)  . 340 

Industries  which  cause  poverty 

and  vice  . 51,120 

Insane  in  almshouses  and  jails 

111,  112, 114 

Inspection  vs.  detection .  89 

Inspection  and  Supervision  in 

Indiana  .  79 

Board  of  State  Charities,  The.  81 

annual  report,  the  first .  97 

asylums  for  poor . 137 

employment  of  inmates . .  143 
f.  m.  the,  treatment  in...  145 

insane  in  . 144 

visits  of  inspection  to ... .  139 

bi-partisan  boards  .  84 

card  catalog  of  instn.  inmates.  131 

dependent  children  . 150 

county  orphans  homes . 150 

migrant  children  . 153 

importation  of,  into  state 

in  26  years . 154 

finances  and  contracts . 133 

forthcoming  reports  as  news . .  102 
hospitals  ins.  inspection  of . . . .  91 

eastern  hospital,  the . 93,96 

impeachment  law  . 158 

jails,  county  . * .  .127, 128 

see,  common  schools  of  vice. 

Longcliff  hospital . 103 

news  value  of  new  board . 101 

pardon  cases  and  Gov.  Hovey.117 

118 


454 


Index 


Page 

Prisons,  north  97,  South  121 
discipline,  silent  system ....  122 


punishments,  dark  cell . 115 

the  free  hour . 122 

food,  the  slop  contract .  98 

labor,  contract  . 119,120 

Fourth  of  July  in  prison.. .  .125 

prison  schools . 116 

State  penal  farm . 129 

statistical  work  of  Board . 130 

International  Congress  of  Char., 
Corr.  and  Philanthropy, 

Chicago  . 305 

International  Congress  of  Pub. 

Rel.  and  Pri.  Philan¬ 
thropy,  Europe  . 355 

Internationalism  and  Conf . 355 

Inwardness,  method  of .  89 

King  Coal’s  Highway .  14 

Lancashire,  working  people  of . .  5 

Lavish  relief,  from  left-over 

funds  . 32,61 

Legal  Aid  Society,  Chicago . 65 

London  Charity  Organi.  Soc _ 56 

Loyola  School  of  Sociology . 384 

Minimum  wage  law  needed .  57 

Minnesota  St.  Board  of  Char...  131 

National  Prison  Association. ..  .126 
N.  Y.  St.  Char.  Aid  Assn . 316 


Page 


S.  C.  404,  Ky.  402,  Va.  406, 

Fla.  401,  Calif.  408,  Wis. 

410 

cooperative  agencies  . 397 

women’s  clubs . 398 

universities  and  colleges.. .  .398 

Eugenics  record  office . 401 

various  other  agencies . .  402,  403 

f.  m.  the  problem  of . 393 


legislatures  lectured  to,  Ark. 

401,  S.  C.  405,  La.  402,  Fla. 

401,  Mo.  407 

meetings,  varieties  of  audi¬ 
ences  . 397 

Mental  Hygiene  Com.. 394,  397,  401 

403,  408,  416 

Pro,  for  F.  M.  Com.  on . 167 

Southern  States  work  in . 399 

Vineland  Trg.  Sch. . . .  187,  391,  392 

extension  dept,  of . 391,392 

Provident  Associations . 24,  48 

Provident  Society  of  Boston ....  286 

Reformation  of  criminals . 127 

Relief,  eradication  of  a  benefit. .  57 
agent  of,  will  become  obsolete.  53 

habit  like  a  drug  habit .  53 

from  left-over  funds  in  Cinti. .  .25 

32 

in  Chicago  . 32,  60 

Reporter  of  Organized  Charity. .  68 
Responsibility  and  authority  go 

together  . 204 


Ohio  Bd.  of  St.  Charities . 83,97 

Oligarchy,  benevolent,  success . .  273 

Outdoor  relief  in  Buffalo .  21 

Outdoor  relief  in  Cincinnati ....  21 

Pamphlets  on  Char.,  demand  for.  69 

Pauperism,  a  higher . 177 

Pauperization,  a  lesson  in . 32 

Penal  code,  basis  of  in  Indiana . .  121 
Peterloo  massacre,  Chartists ....  6 

Philadelphia  Soc.  for  Org.  Char. 

21,  49 

Plymouth  Church,  Indianapolis.  81 


Politics  and  relief,  Chicago . 70 

Poormaster,  the,  Buffalo .  21 

Poor  relief,  an  adventure  in ... .  156 

Poverty,  abolition  of . 317 

Prisons,  see  Inspection,  etc. 
Propaganda  for  the  F.  M. 

Adventure  in . 389 

task  391,  execution  396,  re¬ 


campaigns  in  states,  Ark.  400, 


Social  Education,  Adventure  in.  .315 


schools  for  soc.  workers . 7,9 

Chicago  school  of  civics  and 

philanthropy  . 379,382 

humanness  of . 383 

practical  and  broad . 383 

Graham  Taylor,  Pres.,  and 

his  home  . 379 


#  Commons,  The .  380,  381,  382,  383 
high  sch.  pupils  and  eugenics.. 386 
N.  Y.  School  of  Philanthropy 

23,  327 


academic  standards . 378 

matriculation  requirements .  376 

field  work  of  students . 375 

summer  school  of  six  weeks. 371 
Salford,  Lancashire,  famine  re¬ 
lief  in  .  5 

Salvation  Army,  The .  24 

Satisfactions  of  Social  Work....  3 
Segregation  and  sterilization  of 

f.  m . 400 


Index 


4oo 


Page 

Self-help,  law  of  life . 32 

Sentinel,  The  Indianapolis. .  .84, 94 

Settlement  theory ,  The . 277 

Social  work,  how  to  understand.  34 

worker,  use  of  term . 8 

Sociology  a  recent  science . 310 

Southern  Socio.  Congress . 399 

St.  George’s  Bene.  Society . 64 

St.  Louis  Provident  Assn. ...  .49,  284 
St.  Vincent  de  Paul  Soc. .  64,  344, 361 

Staff  representative  A.  R.  C _ 447 

Survey,  The  .  7 


Page 

Tax  reform  a  social  need . 318 

United  Charities  of  Chicago....  78 
Utopian  purposes  of  the  C.  O.  S. .  50 

Va.  Bd.  of  St.  Charities . 347 

Verbal  currency,  depreciation  of.  46 
Vision,  future,  of  soc.  work - 391 

Wisconsin  Board  of  St.  Charities  83 
Woodyard  for  tramps,  Cinti....  42 
Chicago  .  69 


DATE  DUE 

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GAYLORD 

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